The Flock reads The Lightning Thief
by kate childof athena
Summary: Max and the rest of the Flock, along with Total and Ella find and read Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief. R&R. Rated T to be safe.
1. Chapter 1

**So they deleted my other story for some reason. So this is me redoing it. I'll try to upload more often sorry.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson or Maximum Ride. **

_Prologue_

Max's POV.

Sigh. I can't believe Angel is dragging us here. A book store. Let me explain some stuff. If you didn't already know, we have wings. We finished off Itex about a year ago and are currently live with my mom, Dr. M. We will be starting school next year, too. Sadly.

"ZOMG do you see all these books? I have never seen so many. Look how big that one is! It must be a thousand pages! Look what color it is, its light blue. I think it's a wonderful color! The color of the ocean! Max can we go to the beach tomorrow? We hav-"

I sent a wasted thankful look to Iggy. Oh well at least the chatter stopped. I felt a hand on mine. I looked over to see Fang smirking at me. Grrr, he can be so aggravating sometimes in that dark hot way of his. Oops. I didn't say that.

"Max! can we get this book! It looks sooo cool. Its about some kid with a messed up life like ours, but he's a demigod and has to go to the underworld for a lightning bolt. Can we get it? Please please please!" Gazzy's voice carried over to me.

"Yea can we get it Max? I wanna read it too. Its called Percy Jackson and the Olympians: the Lightning Thief!" My baby's voice came next with Nudge nodding her head viciously. I looked around the to see if anyone else wanted to read it to. I got the usual shrug from Fang, I had to resist rolling my eyes, and got a sure from Iggy.

"Okay, sure. We can start when we get home." I personal didn't care but if they wanted it then they can.

We paid and went behind the store. First Angel, then Gazzy, Nudge, Iggy, Fang, lastly I flew off into the sky back home.

Percy POV.

I was sitting comfortingly on the beach with my girlfriend, Annabeth. She had just finished telling me something about architectures when Thaila came running over.

"KELP HEAD! Have you seen this? The gods created a book on your adventures!" she screamed at me.

"WHAT!" I yelled back at the same time Annabeth said, "Well, I thought it would take longer. They must have found the right author then. How is the book written?"

"Yea, well, I guess. Anyways the book is written in Percy's POV., and it tells use what he was thinking and feeling." Thaila replied to Annabeth and tossed me the book. I groaned. I was going to burn the book later.


	2. I Accidentally Vaporize My Prealgebra T

**Okay for those who wonder about my first chapter, the only reason I did Percy pov. Was to let you know that he knows about the book too. I might make them see each other in the end, or I'll do the next book, the sea of monsters. I hope this clears it up.**

**Disclaimer I don't own anything = (**

Chapter 1

Max's we arrived home, my mom and sister Ella greeted us. When Nudge told them about the book, Ella decided to join us in my room. While Total went to keep Akliana (does anyone know how to spell her name?) 'Company'. Yea, all sat somewhere, the bed, a chair, or the ground in my room while I sat on my new red bean bag."ZOMG! Can I read? I wanna start it off." Nudge hurried said. With one nod from moi, she started.

**I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-algebra Teacher**

"How the hell do you accidentally vaporize some one?" Iggy asked."I don't know. Maybe if you let Nudge finish then you could find out." came my oh so smart reply.

**Look, I didn't want to be a you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life. Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.**

"Just like us." Angel stated softly. Everyone paused after this and looked down.

**If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever if you recognize yourself in these pages - if you feel something stirring inside - stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for 't say I didn't warn you.**

"Ooh he warned us." Iggy mysterious said. It was quite for five seconds before everyone started laughing. Even Fang was smirking.

**My name is Percy Jackson.I'm 12 years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New I a troubled kid?Yeah. You could say that.**

It pretty sad that he thinks himself troubled, I couldn't help but thinking.

**I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan - twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Arts to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.**

"Ooh I wish we could, Max, learn about the past. All the wars they had, and weapons! Lots and lots of weapons!" Gazzy pleaded."Uh, no. With you and Iggy, the place will blow. And you two don't need more weapon ideas." I said, and glared at the two so they would continuously bother me.

**I know - it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.**

"Were? So there not now?" Ella asked to no one. "Well, my dear, he clearly stated at the beginning he no longer goes there." Iggy stated like a professional we were laughing, Ella told him to shut up.

**But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher was leading this field trip, so I had . Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.**

"That is sooo cool! I wish I could have him as a teacher when we start school. But-" she was cut off by Iggy who yelled "Shut up!", and Ella putting her hand over her mouth."I agree with Nudge." Angel said, with Gazzy nodding. I agreed too, and Fang was Fang who said 'sure'.

**I hoped the trip would be okay. At least I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in was I , bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway.**

Nudge stopped and was choking on her laugher just like everyone else. Even Fang was some what laughing.

"What the were you aiming for then?" Iggy couldn't barely utter.

**And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim.**

Again the had to pause do to their laughter, while fang was silently joining in.

**And the time before that... Well, you get the trip, I was determined to be the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.**

"Okay, that just gross, who eats peanut butter with ketchup?" I asked no one and got no answer.

**Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.**

Then were some snickers, then Nudge told Iggy to shut up and sit down when he tried to do an impression of Grover.

**Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if any bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.**

"But that's the best part." Iggy whined.

"**I'm going to kill her." I mumbled.**

**Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."**

**He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch. **

"**That's it." I stated to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.**

"**You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."**

**Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.**

"So I stilled would've decked her." Nudge said after she finish reading. "She deserved it. Picking on the poor kid."

"I agree Nudge. So would have I." I agreed.

"But his friend told him not to. And he was the one being attacked." Angel disagreed.

"Yea, Grover found it unnecessary to fight. And the whole reason Percy was going to fight her was because of him."

"Well, I agree with Max. I wouldn't have cared and still beat her up." Iggy agreed with me.

I looked to Fang to see his opinion as Ella agreed with Angel and Gazzy. "Gazzy." was all Fang stated.

**Mr. Brunner led the museum rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a **_**stele**_**,****for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.**

"Well, that's creep. He's gets in trouble for trying to listen, and everyone else was talking." Ella stated with Nudge nodding.

**Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was the devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."**

"Okay if my friend said that I'd be a little freaked." I said "You know, Fang isn't a human, he's a vampire." Iggy said very serious. There were a couple of snickers; I just didn't bother to answer. Fang just glared.

**Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral , Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you (shut up?)"It came out louder than I meant it whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story."Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?""Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. "Kronos was the king god, and-""God?" Mr. Brunner asked."Titan," I corrected myself. "And . . . he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? but his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters-""Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.**

"Wimp." Nudge mumbled.

**"-and so there was this big fight between the gods and Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."Some snickers from the me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids'.""And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"**

"Busted!" Everyone yelled at the same time than broke into laughter.

**"Busted," Grover muttered."Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir.""I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their farther, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part is the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."I knew that was coming.I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"**

"I hope he's not in troubled, he didn't do anything." My Angel worried said.

"Don't worry; maybe he just wants to talk." I confidently said. Nudge opened her mouth to add more, but Iggy covered it.

**Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.**

"Can anyone say creepy?" Iggy sarcastically said.

**"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.**

**"About the Titans?"**

**"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."**

**"Oh."**

**"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."**

**I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.**

**I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever **_**lived, **_**and their mother, and what god they worshipped.**

"ZOMG! that's sooo awesome! I wish we could do that in school!" Nudge thankful didn't say anything else. Fang agreed and saying 'its unique but would be hard.' party pooper.

**But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C— in my life. No—he didn't expect me to be **_**as good; **_**he expected me to be **_**better. **_**And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.**

**I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.**

**He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.**

**The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.**

**Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas.**

"Maybe it was, cause remember that hurricane that hit us in Miami?" Gazzy said. (the final warning)

"Yea, maybe." Fang said nodding his head.

**We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.**

**Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.**

**Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from **_**that **_**school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.**

"I doubt it." Angel shook her head.

**"Detention?" Grover asked.**

**"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius."**

**Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"**

Some people *coughIggycough* were snickering. Others like myself and my sister Ella

were giggling.

**I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.**

**I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.**

**Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.**

**I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.**

"If I ever see her, I'm going to kick her ass." Nudge darkly said.

**"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.**

Cue laughter.

**I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.**

"Sounds like you, Max." Iggy happily stated. I just gave him my death-glare. didn't work though, curse his blindness.

**I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"**

**Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.**

**Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"**

**"—the water—"**

**"—like it grabbed her—"**

**I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.**

**As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"**

"I hate it when teachers say that. It always lead to trouble." Ella interrupted.

**"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."**

"Is he an idiot! Its only going to make it worse." Gazzy moaned.

"He's dead now." Fang added.

"She's going to kill him." I agreed.

**That wasn't the right thing to say.**

"You think?" Iggy told the book… Or Nudge's hand.

**"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.**

**"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. **_**I **_**pushed her."**

**I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.**

**She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.**

**"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.**

**"But—"**

**"You—**_**will**_—**stay—here."**

**Grover looked at me desperately.**

**"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."**

**"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "**_**Now**_**."**

**Nancy Bobofit smirked.**

**I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare.**

**Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.**

**How'd she get there so fast?**

"Monster?" Ella asked no one.

**I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.**

**I wasn't so sure.**

"Neither would I." Angel agreed with the book, or Percy.

**I went after Mrs. Dodds.**

**Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.**

**I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.**

**Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.**

**But apparently that wasn't the plan.**

**I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.**

**Except for us, the gallery was empty.**

"Major uh oh." Nudge though out loud.

**Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.**

**Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...**

**"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.**

**I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."**

"Defiantly the safest." Iggy nodded.

**She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"**

**The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.**

**She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.**

Everyone snorted but Ella, who wasn't there the first time they tried school.

**I said, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."**

**Thunder shook the building.**

**"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."**

**I didn't know what she was talking about.**

**All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room.**

Everyone laugh and Iggy looked like he might try that. Looks like I'll have to keep my eye on him.

**Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on **_**Tom Sawyer **_**from the Internet without ever reading the book and-**

Me, Fang, Nudge, Ella, and Iggy all shared knowing looks. We just might try that.

**-now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.**

**"Well?" she demanded.**

**"Ma'am, I don't..."**

**"Your time is up," she hissed.**

**Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.**

Ella paled a little.

**Then things got even stranger.**

**Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.**

**"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.**

"A pen? What is that going to do? Draw on her to death?" Iggy rolled his blind eyes.

**Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.**

**With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.**

"Never mind. I want that pen." Iggy, shocked, said.

**Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.**

**My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.**

**She snarled, "Die, honey!"**

**And she flew straight at me.**

**Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.**

**The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. **_**Hisss!**_

**Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.**

**I was alone.**

**There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.**

**Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.**

**My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.**

**Had I imagined the whole thing?**

**I went back outside.**

**It had started to rain.**

**Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."**

"Who?" everyone said at once.

**I said, "Who?"**

**"Our **_**teacher.**_ **Duh!"**

**I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.**

**She just rolled her eyes and turned away.**

**I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.**

**He said, "Who?"**

**But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.**

"Someone's a terrible liar. Sound familiar Ella?" Iggy teased her.

"I CAN lie, so shut up Iggy." Ella shot back.

"What have you done to her Max? Now she's acting like you." Iggy asked me. Before I could reply, Nudge continued.

**"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."**

**Thunder boomed overhead.**

**I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.**

**I went over to him.**

**He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."**

Everyone chuckled at that.

**I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.**

**"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"**

**He stared at me blankly. "Who?"**

**"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."**

**He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"**

"Well that's the end, who wants to read next?" Nudge questioned.

"I do, I do!" Iggy sarcastically begged.

I rolled my eyes and grabbed the book.


	3. Three Old Ladies Knit The Socks of Death

**Disclaimer: ****fan****fiction**

**a/n I think I'm only going to do Max's POV for this.**

Chapter three

Max's P.O.V

**Three Old Ladies Knit The Socks of Death. **I started.

"I think these titles are funny." Angel said.

"How are they socks of death? What do they even look like? Are they black with ghost and skulls? Or are they white with black designs? How big are-" I promptly place my hand over her mouth as well as carrying on with the book.

**I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly. This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. **

"That would be epic!" Gazzy interrupted. Only Iggy liked his idea. Go figure I though and rolled my eyes along with everyone else but Gazzy.

**The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr-a perky blond woman whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip-had been our pre-algebra teacher since so often I would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.**

Everybody laughed at that.

**It got so I almost believed them-Mrs. Dodds has never .But Grover couldn't fool I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, then claim she didn't exist**. **But I knew he was was going on. Something **_**had**_** happened at the museum.I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy.**

"Damn! Talk about Global Warming. I didn't think it couldn't get that bad. But it does sound mysterious. I mean, something's different about this kid. Its lik-" "NUDGE! Shut up! Your going to ruin the book!" Iggy couldn't take it any more. "sorry" Nudge quietly said in embarrassment.

**One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.**

Everyone's eyes widened slightly.

**I started feeling cranky and irritable lost of the time. My grades slipped from Ds to Fs.I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every , when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped. I called him an old sot. I wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.**

"It means-" "IGGY!" "Um never mind." I glared.

**The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy , I told myself. Just fine.I was homesick.**

"I would be too." Ella softly said.

**I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker yet . . . there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view of the woods out my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine tress. I'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend, even if he was a little strange.**

"Nice way to call your friend." Fang snorted.

**I worries how he'd survive next year without me.I'd miss Latin class, too-Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days in his faith that I could do exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for. I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner told me about this subject being life-a-death for me. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the **_**Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology **_**across my dorm room. Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon, or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin Verbs? Forget it.I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.I remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. **_**I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.**_**I took a deep breath. I picked up my mythology book.I'd never asked a teacher for help before. **

"Never? I've asked some times." Ella shockly said.

**Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat F I was about to score on his exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn't tried.I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice was definitely Grover's said ". . . worries about Percy, sir."I froze.I'm not usually an eavesdropper,**

"Really? Its quite easy. Isn't Max?" Iggy asked

"Shouldn't I be asking you?" I replied.

"Touché"

**but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.I inched closer.". . . alone this summer." Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the **_**school**_**! Now that we know for sure, and **_**they**_** know too-|We would only make matters worse by rushing him." Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy to mature more.""But he may not have time. The summer solstice dead-line-""Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can.""Sir, he _saw_ her . . .""His imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that.""Sir, I . . . I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with know what that would mean.""You haven't failed , Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall-"The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a . Brunner went heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall.A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.**

"What the fhell.?" Iggy questioned. Nobody answered.

**I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.**

**A few seconds later I heard a slow **_**clop-clop-clop, **_**like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, and then moved on.**

Everyone was unintentionally leaning in.

**A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.**

**Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. "Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."**

**"Mine neither," Grover said. "But I could have sworn ..."**

**"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."**

"Exams! don't remind me. I hate those." Ella said with pure hate. Like I would have to jeb.

**"Don't remind me."**

**The lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office.**

**I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.**

**Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm.**

**Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he'd been there all night.**

**"Hey," he said, bleary-eyed. "You going to be ready for this test?"**

**I didn't answer.**

**"You look awful." He frowned. "Is everything okay?"**

**"Just... tired."**

**I turned so he couldn't read my expression, and started getting ready for bed.**

"I would have asked what that was about." Angel confident said. "You know, that whole summer solstice thing." Before anyone else could commit Nudge started. "No you wouldn't, cause you know something wrong. And he's already lying about Mrs. Dodds. So obviously he wont tell."

**I didn't understand what I'd heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I'd imagined the whole thing.**

**But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger.**

**The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam,**

"A three, three hour exam?" Iggy shakily said. "I think, no, I know I would have died from that." Ella agreed in the same manner.

**my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.**

**For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.**

**"Percy," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's ... it's for the best."**

**His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.**

"Kick her ass! How dare she! She better hope she never meets me." I angrily glared at the book. No one said a word in fear I'll yell at them next.

**I mumbled, "Okay, sir."**

**"I mean ..." Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."**

"Is he trying to make him feel upset? Because that's what he's doing." Ella interrupted.

**My eyes stung.**

**Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.**

**"Right," I said, trembling.**

**"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say ... you're not normal, Percy. That's nothing to be—"**

"Run. Screw what he's trying to say and run out of there." Iggy nodded.

**"Thanks," I blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me."**

**"Percy—"**

**But I was already gone.**

**On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.**

**The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were **_**rich **_**juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.**

**They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city.**

**What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I'd go to school in the fall.**

**"Oh," one of the guys said. "That's cool."**

**They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.**

"Okay that's just sad. Just because you he's not rich." Fang shook his head.

**The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had,**

"Stakerish much?" Gazzy rolled his eyes.

**so there we were, together again, heading into the city.**

**During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen.**

"Clue number one that's something wrong." I said. Knowing full well what I started.

**Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.**

**Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.**

**I said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"**

"Trying to kill the poor guy, are we?" Iggy snickered.

**Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"**

**I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.**

**Grover's eye twitched. **

"Clue number 2!" almost everyone yelled as I smiled.

**"How much **_**did **_**you hear?"**

**"Oh ... not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?"**

**He winced. "Look, Percy ... I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers …"**

"He isn't going to believe it." Gazzy grinned. As we all cleared

**"Grover—"**

**"And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and ..."**

**"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."**

Everyone laughed.

**His ears turned pink.**

**From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer.**

**The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:**

_**Grover Underwood**_

_**Keeper**_

_**Half-Blood Hill**_

_**Long Island, New York**_

_**(800)**_ _**009-0009**_

**"What's Half—"**

**"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. **

"Clue three?" Gazzy asked at the same time Ella asked, "Why can't he say it aloud?" I guess no one knew either so one said anything.

**"That's my, um ... summer address."**

**My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.**

**"Okay," I said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."**

"Poor Percy is upset that his best friend is rich and either he never knew, which I highly bet, or that he now feels like the only from there that isn't rich. I don't think that one cause he never mention it. Kind of-" " Your rambling Nudge." I calmly interrupt her.

**He nodded. "Or...or if you need me."**

**"Why would I need you?"**

**It came out harsher than I meant it to.**

**Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you."**

**I stared at him.**

**All year long, I'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without me. And here he was acting like he was the one who defended **_**me.**_

"Aw... that sweet," My baby smiled

**"Grover," I said, "What exactly are you protecting me from?"**

**There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs.**

"Talk about weird, its like something doesn't want Grover to answer that." Fang finally inputted.

**The driver cursed and steered the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.**

**After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have**

**We were on a stretch of country road—no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees-**

"Finally! Some green land!" I happily grinned.

**and litter from passing cars. **

"Or not." my mood and grin vanished as everyone else snickered. Meany's.

**On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.**

**The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice**_**. **_**There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.**

"Damn." Iggy whistled.

**I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.**

**All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.**

**The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.**

**I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.**

**"Grover?" I said. "Hey, man—"**

**"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"**

**"Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"**

"Damn, they had to be huge!" Gazzy's were wide, along with everyone else.

**"Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all."**

**The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears. I heard Grover catch his breath.**

**"We're getting on the bus," he told me. "Come on."**

**"What?" I said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."**

**"Come on!'" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.**

**Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that **_**snip **_**across four lanes of traffic.**

"Okay I have the feeling that was bad really bad." Fang looked around at everyone face while saying this. Everyone nodded. Ella paled. I'm pretty sure she mentioned doing a Greek project in her class once, so I think she knows who that is.

**Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for—Sasquatch or Godzilla.**

Everyone had a strait face for a second, then burst out laughing.

**At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.**

**The passengers cheered.**

**"Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!"**

**Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I'd caught the flu.**

**Grover didn't look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.**

**"Grover?"**

**"Yeah?"**

**"What are you not telling me?"**

**He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"**

**"You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They're not like ... Mrs. Dodds, are they?"**

**His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds. He said, "Just tell me what you saw."**

Iggy suddenly yelled "Boo!" causing use to fall out of where ever we were and us girls screaming. My mom must have heard us and yelled, "Are you all okay up there?" we answered yes while chasing a laughing Iggy around the room, beating him up with pillows.

**"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn."**

**He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost—older.**

**He said, "You saw her snip the cord."**

**"Yeah. So?" But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.**

**"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."**

"Last time? What last time?" Ella and I asked the book at the same time. Making us laugh, as the others either rolled their eyes or looked at us like we're crazy.

**"What last time?"**

**"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."**

**"Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me. "What are you talking about?"**

"Don't blame him." Fang was the first to say.

**"Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me."**

**This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.**

**"Is this like a superstition or something?" I asked.**

**No answer.**

**"Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"**

Everyone shivered.

**He looked at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers I'd like best on my coffin.**

"Finally! I'm done." I didn't even bother to asked who wanted to read. I tossed it to Fang, who looked like it was poison in his hand.


	4. Grover Unexpectedly Loses his Pants

**The flock has no idea the books are real. They think this is all made up. Fiction. Sorry if it seems other wise, its just really hard to put in stuff.**

**Disclaimer: I'm a female so I cannot be James Patterson or Rick Riordan. I don't own any of these stories.**

Chapter 4

Max's P.O.V.

"**Grover Unexpectedly Loses his Pants," **Fang read. The guys snickered. While Nudge had that eww look.

**Confession time: I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.**

**I know, I know. It was rude. But Grover was freaking me out, looking at me like I was a dead man, muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to he sixth grade?"**

"The way Max can when she glares? I mean the freaking out part." Gazzy innocently asked. Everyone laughed silently, while I wasn't sure to take that as a compliment, or not.

**Whenever he got upset, Grover's bladder acted up, so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made me promise to wait for him, then made a beeline for the restroom.**

Laughing. That's the only word I can use to describe us then.

**Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.**

**"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," I told the driver.**

**A word about my mother, before you meet her.**

**Her name is Sally Jackson and she's the best person in the world, which just proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck.**

"I wonder why he says that. Cause its not always true. I mean were good people, but our rotten luck just got use closer. And it created good things. Stuff others could not do, like fly." Nudge said confidently, then softly add, "I just proven him right didn't I?" No one answered. Unsure also.

**Her own parents died in a plane crash when she was five, **

Ella and Nudge put a hand over their mouth. We all were quite for a second before Fang continued.

**and she was raised by an uncle who didn't care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.**

"Wow. Who knew how much humans could go through, like use." Iggy finally broke the silence.

**The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.**

**I don't have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. **

Awwwwwe all the girls but me said, but I did think it.

**My mom doesn't like to talk about him because **_**it **_**makes her sad. She has no pictures.**

**See, they weren't married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.**

**Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.**

"That is sooo sad." Ella added, with everyone nodding.

**She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn't an easy kid.**

"Really? Max, I think we found your long lost brother." Iggy crackled, laughing. Snickers came from about everyone. While I grabbed a pillow and beaten up Iggy to an inch of his death with it.

**Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano, who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him,**

"Then why did she marry him?" My baby asked. I just shrugged my shoulders.

**then showed his true colors as a world-class jerk. When I was young, I nick named him Smelly Gabe. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.**

Again, que laughter.

**Between the two of us, we made my mom's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he and I got along ... well, when I came home is a good example.**

**I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.**

"Ugh. Hadn't he ever heard of cleaning up?" Ella discussed, looked like she wanted to throw up.

**Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, "So, you're home."**

**"Where's my mom?"**

**"Working," he said. "You got any cash?"**

"What kind of parenting is that! Asking your kid, step-kid, for money! That that mother-" "NUDGE!" "Sorry Max. But still that ass asking the kid for money! Why doesn't he get off his lazy ass and work for it?"

**That was it. No **_**Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?**_

**Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.**

"Ew!" all the girls said to this**. **I think I vomited in my mouth while Nudge an Ella ran out the room. "Ugh that disgusting." Their voices drifted in from the hallway. Ella's and Nudge's face were pale when they walked back in.

**He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before. He just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our "guy secret." Meaning, if I told my mom, he would punch my lights out.**

"He is soo lucky he isn't real. Cause he doesn't want to see me." I darkly added. Every one nodded with me.

**"I don't have any cash," I told him.**

**He raised a greasy eyebrow.**

**Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should've covered up everything else.**

We were laughing so hard, Total decided to investigate. "What's so funny?" he huffed. I grabbed the book from Fang and reread the last line. That sent all of us laughing again with Total. After all of us had calmed downed, Total headed out, "Oh, by the way, Dr. M says dinner will be ready soon.

**"You took a taxi from the bus station," he said. "Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. **

"Damn" Iggy whistled.

**Somebody expects to live under this roof, he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?"**

**Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. "Come on, Gabe," he said. "The kid just got here."**

**"Am I **_**right**_**?**_**" **_**Gabe repeated.**

**Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.**

"Ugh, I hoped they don't have a digestive problem like Gazzy." Nudge wrinkled his nose. "Cool!" none other than Gazzy said.

**"Fine," I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. "I hope you lose."**

**"Your report card came, brain boy!" he shouted after me. "I wouldn't act so snooty!"**

**I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn't my room. During school months, it was Gabe's "study." He didn't study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.**

"Disgusting," was said at different times with different pitches. Angel's a high pitch voice and Fang a low huskily hot, wait, pretend that was never said!

**I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.**

**Gabe's smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs. Dodds,**

Que shivers from different people.

**or the sound of that old fruit lady's shears snipping the yarn.**

**But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grover's look of panic—how he'd made me promise I wouldn't go home without him. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone—something—was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.**

"That could give someone nightmares." Angel said. I wondered if that gave her creepy thoughts.

"Is it just me, or can that describes Erasers?" Fang asked.

**Then I heard my mom's voice. "Percy?"**

**She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.**

**My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room.**

I smiled, that's just like my mom. Can make everything go away.

**Her eyes sparkle and change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few gray streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad.**

"Just like your mom, Max. She doesn't see the freak in use. Or that we're experiments. Just the kids we are." Nudge grinned.

**I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe.**

"Damn, she must have patients." Gazzy looked surprised. Nudge nodded, with Ella.

**"Oh, Percy." She hugged me tight. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!"**

**Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She'd brought me a huge bag of "free samples," the way she always did when I came home.**

"Ugh, now I'm hungry. Can they not mention food?" Iggy complained.

"If you would shut up and let Fang read, we'll be done faster. Then could go eat." I signed. Even now, when we could get food whenever, the guys still need more food if it was mentioned.

**We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, **

"Food," Iggy groaned. Before I could even punch him, Ella slapped him upside the head. We all laughed as he rubbed the back of his head, "What have you done to her Max? She's hitting as hard as you."

**she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn't put in my letters. She didn't mention anything about my getting expelled. She didn't seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little boy doing all right?**

**I told her she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see her.**

"Aw…." Nudge, Ella, and Angel repeated.

**From the other room, Gabe yelled, "Hey, Sally—how about some bean dip, huh?"**

**I gritted my teeth.**

"That little-" "Max" "Fine. That little turd, that piece of shit that should have never been born. Happy?" Fang just rolled his eyes.

**My mom is the nicest lady in the world. She should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.**

**For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told her I wasn't too down about the expulsion. I'd lasted almost the whole year this time. I'd made some new friends. I'd done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself.**

"How do you almost convince yourself?" Gazzy questioned. "The same way Max convinces herself that she hates our wonderful gift of bomb building." Only Iggy would think of that.

"Nice job of convincing yourself."

**I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr. Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.**

"I still say he should have punched her." Angel shook her head.

**Until that trip to the museum ...**

**"What?" my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"**

**"No, Mom."**

**I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs. Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.**

"It does."

**She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn't push me.**

**"I have a surprise for you," she said. "We're going to the beach."**

**My eyes widened. "Montauk?"**

**"Three nights—same cabin."**

**"When?"**

**She smiled. "As soon as I get changed."**

**I couldn't believe it. My mom and I hadn't been to Montauk the last two summers, because Gabe said there wasn't enough money.**

**Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, "Bean dip, Sally? Didn't you hear me?"**

"Punch him! Punch him!" we cheered.

**I wanted to punch him, but I met my mom's eyes and I understood she was offering me a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.**

"I think I would have just punched him," I muttered. Nudge laughed, agreeing.

**"I was on my way, honey," she told Gabe. "We were just talking about the trip."**

**Gabe's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?"**

**"I knew it," I muttered. "He won't let us go."**

**"Of course he will," my mom said evenly. "Your step father is just worried about money. That's all. Besides," she added, "Gabriel won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works."**

**Gabe softened a bit. "So this money for your trip ... it comes out of your clothes budget, right?"**

'Why that thing! Threaten her clothes money! How dare he-" Iggy finally managed to cover her mouth his hand.

**"Yes, honey," my mother said.**

**"And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back."**

"I hope it burns and crashed beyond repair. Of course that their fine." Gazzy glared.

**"We'll be very careful."**

**Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip ... And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."**

**Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.**

"Do it!" Everyone screamed.

**But my mom's eyes warned me not to make him mad.**

**Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought?**

**"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I'm really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now."**

**Gabe's eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement.**

"He can't detect the sarcasm? This guys stupid as he is ugly." I stated.

"No shit."

"No one asked you Iggy."

"Same with you."

I glare, "Touché."

**"Yeah, whatever," he decided.**

**He went back to his game.**

**"Thank you, Percy," my mom said. "Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about... whatever you've forgotten to tell me, okay?"**

**For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes—the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride—as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air.**

**But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.**

**An hour later we were ready to leave.**

**Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my mom's bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking—and more important, his '78 Camaro—for the whole weekend.**

"No comment" Ella looked like she was ready to hunt him down.

**"Not a scratch on this car, brain boy," he warned me as I loaded the last bag. "Not one little scratch."**

"Wreck it, wreck it, wreck it," Gazzy slowly started to cheer, with Iggy soon joining.

**Like I'd be the one driving. I was twelve. But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame me.**

"I wonder how." Angel asked.

**Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the stair case as if he'd been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn't stay long enough to find out.**

Fang paused as chatter started, then began afterwards.

**I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.**

**Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets,**

**and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.**

"That doesn't sound like a place I would like to visit" Nudge shivered.

**I loved the place.**

"Ew, I cant believe he-" "He's a guy, Nudge, of course he does." Ella interrupted.

**We'd been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she'd met my dad.**

"Awe, that's so romantic." Nudge and Ella cooed.

**As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea.**

**We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.**

"What's with all the blue?" Gazzy ask.

"Maybe that's his favorite color." Angel guessed.

**I guess I should explain the blue food.**

"Yeah, you should." Ella stated.

**See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. **

"Well, that's a way to prove your point, I guess." Iggy added, looking my way. Or suppose to be, he was looking between me and Angel."

**This—along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs. Ugliano—was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.**

"I don't blame her, who wants a name like." I snickered, with everyone agreeing.

**When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. **

"Stop talking about food, your making me hungry!" Gazzy complained.

**Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.**

**Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk—my father. Mom's eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.**

We all paused, thinking of the parents we never knew, of how life might be different if we didn't have wings.

**"He was kind, Percy," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes."**

**Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud."**

**I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.**

"That doesn't necessary mean anything" Ella put in.

**"How old was I?" I asked. "I mean ... when he left?"**

**She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin."**

**"But... he knew me as a baby."**

**"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born."**

**I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember ... something about my father. A warm glow. A smile.**

"I wonder how that happened," Nudge mumbled "How could he remember if it never happened." she cocked her head.

**I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I'd felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he'd never even seen me...**

**I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He'd left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.**

"Well, the last reason is enough to make anyone angry," Iggy joked. No commented.

**"Are you going to send me away again?" I asked her. "To another boarding school?"**

**She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.**

**"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think ... I think we'll have to do something."**

**"Because you don't want me around?"**

"That, that jerk! How a dare he!" Angel yelled, before anyone else.

**I regretted the words as soon as they were out.**

"He better…." Me and Nudge threaten.

**My mom's eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. "Oh, Percy, no. I—I **_**have **_**to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away."**

**Her words reminded me of what Mr. Brunner had said—that it was best for me to leave Yancy.**

**"Because I'm not normal," I said.**

"So? Where not normal? doesn't mean we have to go to boarding school every year." I rolled my eyes.

"That's cause we never went to school, we were in hiding for six years, and we flew from place to place when we seen an eraser." Fang smugly stated. I glared, jerk. Stupid, hot, dark, jerk. Um, forget I said that.

**"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Percy. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."**

**"Safe from what?"**

**She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me—all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.**

**During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.**

"That's all some in a weird way." Iggy grinned. Nudge and Ella looked at him weirdly.

**Before that—a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I'd somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.**

"Um…" Gazzy started but no one knew what to say.

**In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.**

**I knew I should tell my mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that.**

"And that, is what could get you killed." I shook my head. Everyone knew that could be the difference from life and death.

**"I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," my mom said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Percy—the place your father wanted to send you. And I just... I just can't stand to do it."**

**"My father wanted me to go to a special school?"**

**"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp."**

**My head was spinning. Why would my dad—who hadn't even stayed around long enough to see me born— talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she ever mentioned it before?**

**"I'm sorry, Percy," she said, seeing the look in my eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I—I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good."**

**"For good? But if it's only a summer camp ..."**

"Umm I thought you don't stay foreve summer camp?" Angel asked.

I shook my head, "You don't."

**She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her any more questions she would start to cry.**

"Then don't ask." Ella said.

**That night I had a vivid dream.**

**It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf.**

"Awesome!" Gazzy rubbed his hands together.

**The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagles wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.**

Iggy was saying fight, fight, fight. Each time a little louder. Gazzy was cheering.

**I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and I screamed, **_**No!**_

Iggy whistled while Angel looked relieved they didn't kill each other.

**I woke with a start.**

**Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.**

**With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, "Hurricane."**

**I knew that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.**

"Its starting to get good" Gazzy grinned.

**Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice—someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.**

**My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.**

**Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn't... he wasn't exactly Grover.**

"How can he not look like Grover?"

"Shut up, maybe they'll tell"

"…"

**"Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"**

**My mother looked at me in terror—not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.**

"Why would she b-," Nudge started but seen my glare, "Never mind." she squeaked.

**"Percy," she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"**

**I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn't understand what I was seeing.**

_**"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!" **_**he yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you **_**tell **_**her?"**

**I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, **

" _O Zeu kai alloi theoi_!" Iggy said, then started laughing. Great, I don't even know what that means, but he can now curse someone in Greek.

"Do you even know what it means?" Ella asked.

"No"

"Sign, let me look it up." she replied, after five minutes she started laughing. "It means 'O Zeus and other gods'"

"That's a curse?" as we laughed at him, he muttered, "How can that be a curse?"

**and I'd understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his pants on—**

"How could he not have pants on?"

"I don't know Angel."

**and where his legs should be ... where his legs should be ...**

**My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before: **_**"Percy. **_**Tell me **_**now**_**!"**

"No... tell me where his legs should be..." Iggy said trying to keep a straight face, an failing.

**I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds, and my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.**

"I don't blame her, she probably thinks he's crazy." I shook my head.

**She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you. **_**Go**_**!**_**"**_

"…or not…"

**Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.**

**Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.**

"Finally!" Iggy half yelled half laughed.

Fang tossed the book to Gazzy.

"Okay guys, lets go eat." I stood up walking towards the door, with everyone following. Making jokes about the book.


	5. My Mother Teaches me Bullfighting

**Disclaimer- if I owned PJO, I would be writing the son of Neptune**

**And Angel wouldn't be evil, and Dylan never existed. Fax all the way!**

_**Fav quote at this moment- "I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago." Edgar Allan Poe **_

**In case your cant figure it out *rolls eyes* they're in Max's bedroom. And ****NO OCs.**** I will never have a story with OCs unless I need random people, so maybe at the end. But I highly doubt it.**

Chapter 5

Max's POV

As we filed back into the room, Total decided to join us reading the books.

"Max, do I have to read?" Gazzy asked me.

"Yes, Gazzy, you can even try to imitate there voices if you want to." I rolled my eyes at I noticed his smile at the last part.

**My Mother Teaches me Bullfighting**

"I wish Dr. M would teach us that…" Iggy smiled hopefully. Me and Ella shared a look, then stared laughing. Like she would teach us that…

**We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the wind shield. I didn't know how my mom could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.**

**Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to me in the backseat and I wondered if I'd gone insane, or if he was wearing some kind of shag-carpet pants.**

"I want shag-carpet pants!" Gazzy yelled out.

"I wonder if we could buy some…? Maybe e-bay." Iggy nodded, "We're so going to check."

Suddenly Nudge broke off laughing. As we all gave her a quizzed look, Total asked, "What so funny?"

"Try picture…Gazzy and Iggy…wearing those in a…fight…" she answered laughing. Soon all of us were laughing.

"**But, no, the smell was one I remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo— lanolin, like from wool. The smell of a wet barnyard animal." **Gazzy read in a narrators voice.

"Isn't that mean? Describing him like that?" Angel asked.

Nudge replied the quickest, "No, he isn't saying it out loud, that would be mean. He's just describing him for others to understand how he smelled, that's what author do, describe something for the reader as if they're in it, part of it. And-" Iggy covered her mouth, "I think she understands it now. Continue now Gazzy."

**All I could think to say was, "So, you and my mom... know each other?" **

Iggy started laughing so hard he fell off his chair and onto the floor, while Fang's mouth quirked.

"What's so funny?" Angel asked. I sent them both my I'm-going-to-kill-you-if-you-don't-shutup glares. Fang shook his head, while Iggy said you'll understand when you're older.

"Guys" Nudge said softly under her breath to Ella, who rolled her eyes.

**Graver's eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, though there were no cars behind us. "Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But she knew I was watching you."**

"STOCKER" Iggy yelled really loud, causing us to laugh at different degrees.

**"Watching me?"**

**"Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I **_**am **_**your friend."**

**"Urn ... what **_**are **_**you, exactly?"**

**"That doesn't matter right now."**

"Sure it doesn't." I said sarcastically.

**"It doesn't matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey—"**

**Grover let out a sharp, throaty **_**"Blaa-ha-ha!"**_

**I'd heard him make that sound before, but I'd always assumed it was a nervous laugh. Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat.**

**"Goat!" he cried.**

**"What?"**

**"I'm a **_**goat **_**from the waist down."**

**"You just said it didn't matter."**

"He has a point, he said it didn't matter." Gazzy shrugged.

_**"Blaa-ha-ha!**_ **There are satyrs who would trample you underhoof for such an insult!"**

**"Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like ... Mr. Brunner's myths?"**

"Obviously, he said satyrs." Total rolled his eyes.

"Total, not everyone knows about mutations and stuff like that we're used to it, but to someone who isn't, they wouldn't." I explained to him.

**"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a **_**myth, **_**Percy? Was Mrs. Dodds a myth?"**

**"So you **_**admit **_**there was a Mrs. Dodds!"**

"He just did!" Iggy shouted at the book.

**"Of course."**

**"Then why—"**

**"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are."**

"Who he is?"

**"Who I—wait a minute, what do you mean?"**

**The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.**

**"Percy," my mom said, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."**

**"Safety from what? Who's after me?"**

**"Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions."**

"…damn" Ella commented.

**"Grover!"**

**"Sorry, Mrs. Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"**

**I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn't do it. I knew this wasn't a dream. I had no imagination. I could never dream up something this weird.**

**My mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.**

"Whoa, that so normal is the story after everything that happened." Total licked his paws.

**"Where are we going?" I asked.**

**"The summer camp I told you about." My mother's voice was tight; she was trying for my sake not to be scared. "The place your father wanted to send you."**

**"The place you didn't want me to go."**

**"Please, dear," my mother begged. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."**

**"Because some old ladies cut yarn."**

**"Those weren't old ladies," Grover said. "Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means—the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you're about to ... when someone's about to die."**

"Bad choice of words." my baby stated.

**"Whoa. You said 'you.'"**

**"No I didn't. I said 'someone.'"**

**"You meant 'you.' As in **_**me.**_**"**

**"I meant **_**you, **_**like 'someone.' Not you, **_**you.**_**"**

"What? I'm lost." Iggy confessed.

"He basically said that when he said you're about to die, he meant someone's about to die." I clarified for everyone.

**"Boys!" my mom said.**

**She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid—a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.**

**"What was that?" I asked.**

**"We're almost there," my mother said, ignoring my question.**

"I take it we don't want to know?"

**"Another mile. Please. Please. Please."**

**I didn't know where **_**there **_**was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive.**

**Outside, nothing but rain and darkness—the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs. Dodds and the moment when she'd changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really **_**hadn't **_**been human. She'd meant to kill me.**

"You thought about that then... it happened months ago!" Max shouted out loud, everyone had a shock expression.

"How stupid can he be?"

**Then I thought about Mr. Brunner ... and the sword he had thrown me. Before I could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling **_**boom!, **_**and our car exploded.**

"Damn, what kin of explosion do you think it is?" Gazzy directed towards Iggy, who ha a thoughtful look before shrugging.

**I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time.**

**I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver's seat and said, "Ow."**

"…that's all he can think to say?"

**"Percy!" my mom shouted.**

**"I'm okay..."**

**I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn't dead. The car hadn't really exploded. We'd swerved into a ditch. **

"That wouldn't have caused that!" Iggy yelled.

"Let Gazzy finish and maybe we could find out" I said through gritted teeth.

**Our driver's-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.**

**Lightning. That was the only explanation. We'd been blasted right off the road. Next to me in the backseat was a big motionless lump. "Grover!"**

"Lightning? That would explain it." Gazzy nodded

… "Does anyone cares that Grover might be dead?" my sister quietly said.

**He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!**

All the girls smiled at this.

**Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.**

Everyone stiffed their laughs, "That's all he had to say? Whoa, just whoa."

**"Percy," my mother said, "we have to ..." Her voice faltered.**

**I looked back. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.**

"Um why would someone hold there hands up to look like horns?" Angel asked. No one could answer.

**I swallowed hard. "Who is—?"**

**"Percy," my mother said, deadly serious. "Get out of the car."**

"It's finally getting good." Iggy grinned rubbing his hands together.

**My mother threw herself against the driver's-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too. I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might've been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.**

**"Climb out the passenger's side!" my mother told me. "Percy—you have to run. Do you see that big tree?"**

_**"What?"**_

**Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.**

"Nice description." Total licked his paws

**"That's the property line," my mom said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."**

**"Mom, you're coming too."**

**Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.**

"She's acting like she can't go, why can't she go?"

**"No!" I shouted. "You **_**are **_**coming with me. Help me carry Grover."**

**"Food!" Grover moaned, a little louder.**

"We get you want food! Now shut up!" Nudge, annoyed, shouted.

**The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he **_**couldn't **_**be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands—huge meaty hands—were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head ... was his head. And the points that looked like horns …**

"Were horns... we get it," I said rolling my eyes.

"It's the Minotaur, isn't it?" Fang added.

"What?" we all looked at him

"We learned about some myths when we went to back at Virginia."

Great, just make us seem stupid.

**"He doesn't want **_**us**_**," my mother told me. "He wants **_**you. **_**Besides, I can't cross the property line."**

"Why not?"

**"But..."**

**"We don't have time, Percy. Go. Please."**

**I got mad, then—mad at my mother, at Grover the goat,**

"I don't think Grover will like that…"

**at the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull.**

**I climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. "We're going together. Come on, Mom."**

**"I told you—"**

**"Mom! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover."**

**I didn't wait for her answer. I scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the car. He was surprisingly light, but I couldn't have carried him very far if my mom hadn't come to my aid.**

**Together, we draped Grover's arms over our shoulders and started stumbling uphill through wet waist-high grass.**

**Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of **_**Muscle Man **_**magazine—bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except under wear—**

"Um... why is he only in underwear?" Angel questioned and Ella just shrugged.

**I mean, bright white Fruit of the Looms—which would've looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.**

"That is disgusting!" Nudge looked like she wanted to ad more but Gazzy continue quickly.

**His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns—enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.**

"Who has time to think these thinks where they're about to be attacked?" I said surprised.

"I don't know but it is funny…"

**I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr. Brunner told us. But he couldn't be real.**

**I blinked the rain out of my eyes. "That's—"**

**"Pasiphae's son," my mother said.**

"The minotaur"

**"I wish I'd known how badly they want to kill you."**

**"But he's the Min—"**

**"Don't say his name," she warned. "Names have power."**

"Oh, that's why she said Pasiphae's son." Ella nodded

**The pine tree was still way too far—a hundred yards uphill at least.**

**I glanced behind me again.**

**The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows—or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn't sure why he bothered, since we were only about fifty feet away.**

"Cant he see them?"

**"Food?" Grover moaned.**

**"Shhh," I told him. "Mom, what's he doing? Doesn't he see us?"**

**"His sight and hearing are terrible," she said. "He goes by smell. But he'll figure out where we are soon enough."**

**As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe's Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.**

_**Not a scratch, **_**I remembered Gabe saying.**

**Oops.**

We burst out laughing at the dudes random, but funny thoughts.

**"Percy," my mom said. "When he sees us, he'll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way— directly sideways. He can't change directions very well once he's charging. Do you understand?"**

"That's pretty smart…I think" Angel nodded.

**"How do you know all this?"**

**"I've been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this. I was selfish, keeping you near me."**

**"Keeping me near you? But—"**

**Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.**

**He'd smelled us.**

**The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker, and Grover wasn't getting any lighter.**

**The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he'd be on top of us.**

**My mother must've been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. "Go, Percy! Separate! Remember what I said."**

**I didn't want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right—it was our only chance. I sprinted to the left, turned, and saw the creature bearing down on me. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.**

Ella ran out of the room…my guess to throw up. We waited for her to come back before we began again.

**He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at my chest.**

**The fear in my stomach made me want to bolt, but that wouldn't work. I could never outrun this thing.**

**So I held my ground, and at the last moment, I jumped to the side.**

**The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration and turned, but not toward me this time, toward my mother, who was setting Grover down in the grass.**

**We'd reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley, just as my mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We'd never make it.**

**The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing my mother, who was now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.**

**"Run, Percy!" she told me. "I can't go any farther. Run!"**

**But I just stood there, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her. She tried to sidestep, as she'd told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she struggled, kicking and pummeling the air.**

"NO!" Angel screamed.

**"Mom!"**

**She caught my eyes, managed to choke out one last word: "Go!"**

**Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around my mother's neck, and she dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was simply ... gone.**

Angel, Nudge, and Ella all had tears coming down there eyes, along with Total. The rest of us were in shock. I couldn't believe what we just red, I pictured that as my mom. And knew exactly what might have run through his mind.

**"No!"**

**Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strength burned in my limbs**

Adrenaline

—**the same rush of energy I'd gotten when Mrs. Dodds grew talons.**

**The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling my best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too.**

**I couldn't allow that.**

**I stripped off my red rain jacket.**

**"Hey!" I screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster. "Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"**

I rolled my eyes, "Worst comeback ever."

**"Raaaarrrrr!" The monster turned toward me, shaking his meaty fists.**

**I had an idea—a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all.**

"Its ideas like that that get you killed." Fang shook his head, his black hair moving a millisecond behind.

**I put my back to the big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking I'd jump out of the way at the last moment.**

**But it didn't happen like that.**

"Of course it didn't," Nudge rolled her eyes.

**The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab me whichever way I tried to dodge.**

**Time slowed down.**

**My legs tensed. I couldn't jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, kicking off from the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck.**

"…Hot the f*ck did he do that?" Iggy yelled, "I was too surprised by what he did to yell at Iggy."

**How did I do that?**

"Isn't that what we all want to know?"

**I didn't have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster's head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth out.**

**The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake me. I locked my arms around his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in my eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils.**

**The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should have just backed up into the tree and smashed me flat, but I was starting to realize that this thing had only one gear: forward.**

**Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. I wanted to yell at him to shut up, but the way I was getting tossed around, if I opened my mouth I'd bite my own tongue off.**

**"Food!" Grover moaned.**

**The bull-man wheeled toward him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. I thought about how he had squeezed the life out of my mother, made her disappear in a flash of light,**

**and rage filled me like high-octane fuel. I got both hands around one horn and I pulled backward with all my might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then—**_**snap!**_

**The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back in the grass. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.**

Gazzy whistled.

**The monster charged.**

**Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barreled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.**

"And killed it." Angel said in a duh tone. Ah she's learning from me, I smiled at that.

**The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate—not like my mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart.**

"But that didn't happen to his mother." Ella observed.

**The monster was gone.**

**The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was splitting open. I was weak and scared and trembling with grief I'd just seen my mother vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, but there was Grover, needing my help, so I managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the farm house. I was crying, calling for my mother, but I held on to Grover—I wasn't going to let him go.**

**The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blond hair curled like a princess's.**

**They both looked down at me, and the girl said, "He's the one. He must be."**

**"Silence, Annabeth," the man said. "He's still conscious. Bring him inside."**

"Done" Gazzy passed the book to Ella.


	6. I play Pinochle with a horse

**Disclaimer: fan fiction**

_It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt-Mark Twain_

Chapter 6

Max's POV

**I play Pinochle with a horse." **Ella read.

"What's up with all these weird titles?" Total questioned

**I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals. Most of them wanted to kill me. The rest wanted food.**

"Okay...that's odd." Gazzy said.

**I must have woken up several times, but what I heard and saw made no sense, so I just passed out again. I remember lying in a soft bed, being spoon-fed something that tasted like buttered popcorn, only it was pudding. The girl with curly blonde hair hovered over me, smirking as scarped drips off my chin with the spoon.**

"Dude, that's not how you impress the ladies," Iggy shook his head, "that's how you scary them away."

I couldn't help it; I rolled my eyes as Ella slapped him upside the head.

"I don't think he cares, he's only 12 Iggy." Nudge would have said more but was interrupted,

"Of course he cares! All guys do! Isn't that right Fang?"

"Don't get me involved"

"So you agree?" I questioned.

"I didn't say that."

"He agrees he just doesn't want to be in trouble with you, Ella, and Nudge." Angel must have read his thoughts.

"So you do agree?" I smirked.

"…"

"Whipped" Iggy whispered to him.

**When she saw my eyes open, she asked, "What will happen at the summer solstice?"**

"A little bossy isn't she?"

**I managed to croak, "What?"**

**She looked around; as if afraid someone would over hear. "What's going on? What was stolen? We've only got a few weeks!"**

"Never she's not a little bossy, she's bossy period."

**"I'm sorry," I mumbled, "I don't..."**

**Somebody knocked on the door, and the girl quickly filled my mouth with pudding.**

**The next time I woke up, the girl was gone.**

**A husky blond dude, like a surfer, stood in the corner of the bedroom keeping watch over me. He had blue eyes- at least a dozen of them- on his cheeks, his forehead, the backs of his hands.**

"I'm now so glad the white-coats didn't try that." Gazzy looked a little startled.

**When I finally came around for good, there was nothing weird about my surroundings, except that they were nicer than I was used to. I was sitting in a deck chair on a huge porch, gazing across a meadow at green hills in the distance. The breeze smelled like strawberries. There was a blanket over my legs, a pillow behind my neck.**

"That sounds beautiful." Ella signed wistfully.

**All that was great, but my mouth felt like a scorpion had been using it for a nest. My tongue was dry and nasty and every one of my teeth hurt.**

**On the table next to me was a tall drink. It looked like iced apple juice, with a green straw and a paper parasol stuck through a maraschino cherry.**

**My hand was so weak I almost dropped the glass once I got my fingers around it.**

**"Careful," a familiar voice said.**

**Grover was leaning against the porch railing, looking like he hadn't slept in a week.**

"Maybe he hasn't."

**Under one arm, he cradled a shoe box. He was wearing blue jeans, Converse hi-tops and a bright orange T-shirt that said CAMP HALF-BLOOD. Just plain old Grover, Not the goat boy.**

**So maybe I'd had a nightmare. Maybe my mom was okay. We were still on vacation, and we'd stopped here at this big house for some reason. And...**

"Seriously? You think it all a dream?"

**"You saved my life," Grover said. "I... well, the least I could do ... I went back to the hill. I thought you might want this."**

**Reverently, he placed the shoe box in my lap.**

**Inside was a black-and-white bull's horn, the base jagged from being broken off, the tip splattered with dried blood. It hadn't been a nightmare.**

**"The Minotaur," I said.**

"Didn't his mom say not to," Nudge questioned, "Cause that would mean-" Iggy covered her mouth.

**"Urn, Percy, it isn't a good idea-"**

**"That's what they call him in the Greek myths, isn't it?" I demanded. "The Minotaur. Half man, half bull."**

**Grover shifted uncomfortably. "You've been out for two days. How much do you remember?"**

**"My mom. Is she really ..."**

**He looked down.**

Ella and Nudge looked like they were going to cry.

**I stared across the meadow. There were groves of trees, a winding stream, acres of strawberries spread out under the blue sky. The valley was surrounded by rolling hills, and the tallest one, directly in front of us, was the one with the huge pine tree on top. Even that looked beautiful in the sunlight.**

**My mother was gone. The whole world should be black and cold. Nothing should look beautiful.**

"That's so cute." Angel smiled along with Nudge and Ella, while Iggy whispered to Fang, "Girls and their emotions." We all (Angel Nudge Ella and I) threw pillows at them.

**"I'm sorry," Grover sniffled. "I'm a failure. I'm- I'm the worst satyr in the world."**

**He moaned, stomping his foot so hard it came off. I mean, the Converse hi-top came off. The inside was filled with Styrofoam, except for a hoof-shaped hole.**

"Um weird?"

**Oh, Styx!" he mumbled.**

**Thunder rolled across the clear sky.**

"Would that be like: oh hell, or god damnit?"

"How the hell would I know?"

"Cause your Max the leader who knows everything." Iggy stood up for Gazzy.

"Well I don't. I know as much as you and everyone else."

"So nothing?"

I gave him one of my famous glares that was wasted since he couldn't see it.

**As he struggled to get his hoof back in the fake foot, I thought, well, that settles it.**

**Grover was a satyr. I was ready to bet that if I shaved his curly brown hair, I'd find tiny horns on his head.**

**But I was too miserable to care that satyrs existed, or even Minotaurs. All that meant was my mom really had been squeezed into nothingness, dissolved into yellow light.**

**I was alone. An orphan. I would have to live with ... Smelly Gabe?**

"Ew eww eww no. no way id do something else. Like-"

"Nudge I cant feel my ears!"

"Sorry Gazzy."

**No. That would never happen. I would live on the streets first. I would pretend I was seventeen and join the army. I'd do something.**

**Grover was still sniffling. The poor kid- poor goat, satyr, whatever- looked as if he expected to be hit.**

**I said, "It wasn't your fault."**

**"Yes, it was. I was supposed to **_**protect **_**you."**

**"Did my mother ask you to protect me?"**

**"No. But that's my job. I'm a keeper. At least... I was."**

**"But why ..." I suddenly felt dizzy, my vision swimming.**

**"Don't strain yourself," Grover said. "Here." He helped me hold my glass and put the straw to my lips.**

**I recoiled at the taste, because I was expecting apple juice. It wasn't that at all. It was chocolate-chip cookies. Liquid cookies.**

"Hey look Max; they invented something for you, cookies to drink. You can now take them anywhere." Fang smirked over at me. Everyone else cracked out laughing, while I gave said hot aggravating mysterious bird-dude a deadly look of hatred. Yup. That's why my face is red. Not from embarrassing. Nope. I never get embarrassed. "Continue Ella."

**And not just any cookies- my mom's homemade blue chocolate-chip cookies, buttery and hot, with the chips still melting. Drinking it, my whole body felt warm and good, full of energy. My grief didn't go away, but I felt as if my mom had just brushed her hand against my cheek, given me a cookie the way she used to when I was small, and told me everything was going to be okay.**

**Before I knew it, I'd drained the glass. I stared into it, sure I'd just had a warm drink, but the ice cubes hadn't even melted.**

**"Was it good?" Grover asked.**

**I nodded.**

**"What did it taste like?" He sounded so wistful, I felt guilty.**

**"Sorry," I said. "I should've let you taste."**

**His eyes got wide. "No! That's not what I meant. I just... wondered."**

**"Chocolate-chip cookies," I said. "My mom's. Home made."**

**He sighed. "And how do you feel?"**

**"Like I could throw Nancy Bobofit a hundred yards."**

"'Like I could throw Nancy Bobofit a hundred yards'" Iggy said in a very high pitched voice.

**"That's good," he said. "That's good. I don't think you could risk drinking any more of that stuff"**

**"What do you mean?"**

**He took the empty glass from me gingerly, as if it were dynamite, and set it back on the table. "Come on. Chiron and Mr. D are waiting."**

**The porch wrapped all the way around the farmhouse.**

**My legs felt wobbly, trying to walk that far. Grover offered to carry the Minotaur horn, but I held on to it. I'd paid for that souvenir the hard way. I wasn't going to let it go.**

**As we came around the opposite end of the house, I caught my breath.**

**We must've been on the north shore of Long Island, because on this side of the house, the valley marched all the way up to the water, which glittered about a mile in the distance. Between here and there, I simply couldn't process everything I was seeing. The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek architecture" an open-air pavilion, an amphitheater, a circular arena" except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school-age kids and satyrs played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Grover's were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless I was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings.**

"Other experiments? I didn't know there was any like that? I wish we had one. A pretty white with some black, not like a zebra, that would be too weird. I would ride her every day even though we have wings cause you know it would be pretty awesome to ride on something else. It would be sooo cool if we could take to them. They'll be like hey I-"

"NUDGE!"

"…sorry but it woul-"

"Nudge can I please continue now?" Ella continued before she could respond.

**Down at the end of the porch, two men sat across from each other at a card table. The blond-haired girl who'd spoon-fed me popcorn-flavored pudding was leaning on the porch rail next to them.**

**The man facing me was small, but porky. He had a red nose, big watery eyes, and curly hair so black it was almost purple. He looked like those paintings of baby angels- what do you call them, hubbubs? No, cherubs. That's it. He looked like a cherub who'd turned middle-aged in a trailer park.**

As we were laughing, Gazzy added, "I love this guy's thoughts!"

**He wore a tiger-pattern Hawaiian shirt, and he would've fit right in at one of Gabe's poker parties, except I got the feeling this guy could've out-gambled even my step father.**

"So is he calling his stepfather good? Or D bad" Iggy questioned

"Shut up no one knows"

**"That's Mr. D," Grover murmured to me. "He's the camp director. Be polite. The girl, that's Annabeth Chase. She's just a camper, but she's been here longer than just about anybody. And you already know Chiron..."**

**He pointed at the guy whose back was to me.**

**First, I realized he was sitting in the wheelchair. Then I recognized the tweed jacket, the thinning brown hair, the scraggly beard.**

**"Mr. Brunner!" I cried.**

"Didn't he just say that was Chiron? Does this guy not pay attention?" I through my hands in the air dramatically.

"You do realize your talking to a book." Fang smirked at me while everyone tried to cover up there laughter.

"Shut up" I tried to hide my blush.

**The Latin teacher turned and smiled at me. His eyes had that mischievous glint they sometimes got in class when he pulled a pop quiz and made all the multiple choice answers **_**B**_**.**

"Ugh that is so annoying. Cause then you think you did something wrong and go back to check all the answers at least twice."

**"Ah, good, Percy," he said. "Now we have four for pinochle."**

**He offered me a chair to the right of Mr. D, who looked at me with bloodshot eyes and heaved a great sigh. "Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now, don't expect me to be glad to see you."**

"Cheerful guy isn't he?" Nudge rolled her eyes.

"I think we found Max's long lost relative." Iggy said sarcastically. Let's just say Iggy won't be talking for a while, shall we?

**"Uh, thanks." I scooted a little farther away from him because, **_**if **_**there was one thing I had learned from living with Gabe, it was how to tell when an adult has been hitting the happy juice. If Mr. D was a stranger to alcohol, I was a satyr.**

"Happy juice?" Nudge asked.

"Wine, alcohol, etc." I whispered in her ear.

**"Annabeth?" Mr. Brunner called to the blond girl.**

I could tell Iggy wanted to say something but couldn't.

**She came forward and Mr. Brunner introduced us. "This young lady nursed you back to health, Percy. Annabeth, my dear, why don't you go check on Percy's bunk? We'll be putting him in cabin eleven for now."**

"Cabin eleven?"

"That's what he said dumbass."

**Annabeth said, "Sure, Chiron."**

**She was probably my age, maybe a couple of inches taller, and a whole lot more athletic looking. With her deep tan and her curly blond hair, she was almost exactly what I thought a stereotypical California girl would look like, **

Iggy managed to get out of the ropes, "Ah, California girls." I rolled my eyes, what a pervert.

**except her eyes ruined the image. They were startling gray, like storm clouds; pretty, but intimidating, too, as if she were analyzing the best way to take me down in a fight.**

"She reminds me of Max, beautiful, but able to fight and very strong." Angel smiled at me. I could have sworn Fang nodded slightly, but it was probably my eyes playing tricks on me.

**She glanced at the minotaur horn in my hands, then back at me. I imagined she was going to say, **_**You killed a minotaur! **_**or **_**Wow, you're so awesome! **_**or something like that.**

"Big ego he has, doesn't he?"

**Instead she said, "You drool when you sleep."**

Everyone laughed.

**Then she sprinted off down the lawn, her blond hair flying behind her.**

**"So," I said, anxious to change the subject. "You, uh, work here, Mr. Brunner?"**

"Didn't they say his name was Chiron?" Total stated.

**"Not Mr. Brunner," the ex-Mr. Brunner said. "I'm afraid that was a pseudonym. You may call me Chiron."**

"See"

**"Okay." Totally confused, I looked at the director. "And Mr. D ... does that stand for something?"**

**Mr. D stopped shuffling the cards. He looked at me like I'd just belched loudly. "Young man, names are powerful things. You don't just go around using them for no reason."**

**"Oh. Right. Sorry."**

**"I must say, Percy," Chiron-Brunner broke in, "I'm glad to see you alive. It's been a long time since I've made a house call to a potential camper. I'd hate to think I've wasted my time."**

**"House call?"**

**"My year at Yancy Academy, to instruct you. We have satyrs at most schools, of course, keeping a lookout. But Grover alerted me as soon as he met you. He sensed you were something special, so I decided to come upstate. I convinced the other Latin teacher to ... ah, take a leave of absence."**

**I tried to remember the beginning of the school year. It seemed like so long ago, but I did have a fuzzy memory of there being another Latin teacher my first week at Yancy. Then, without explanation, he had disappeared and Mr. Brunner had taken the class.**

"Weird…"

**"You came to Yancy just to teach me?" I asked.**

"Big ego." Nudge sang.

**Chiron nodded. "Honestly, I wasn't sure about you at first.**

"What a way to make a kid feel special."

**We contacted your mother, let her know we were keeping an eye on you in case you were ready for Camp Half-Blood. But you still had so much to learn. Nevertheless, you made it here alive, and that's always the first test."**

**"Grover," Mr. D said impatiently, "are you playing or not?"**

**"Yes, sir!" Grover trembled as he took the fourth chair, though I didn't know why he should be so afraid of a pudgy little man in a tiger-print Hawaiian shirt.**

"You just realize that?"

**"You **_**do **_**know how to play pinochle?" Mr. D eyed me suspiciously.**

**"I'm afraid not," I said.**

**"I'm afraid not, **_**sir**_**," he said.**

**"Sir," I repeated. I was liking the camp director less and less.**

"What is he some military commander? I wouldn't do that on purpose." Iggy snorted.

**"Well," he told me, "it is, along with gladiator fighting and Pac-Man, one of the greatest games ever invented by humans. I would expect all **_**civilized **_**young men to know the rules."**

**"I'm sure the boy can learn," Chiron said.**

**"Please," I said, "what is this place? What am I doing here? Mr. Brunner-Chiron why would you go to Yancy Academy just to teach me?"**

**Mr. D snorted. "I asked the same question."**

"Of course he did"

**The camp director dealt the cards. Grover flinched every time one landed in his pile.**

**Chiron smiled at me sympathetically, the way he used to in Latin class, as if to let me know that no matter what my average was, **_**I **_**was his star student. He expected **_**me **_**to have the right answer.**

**"Percy," he said. "Did your mother tell you nothing?'**

**"She said ..." I remembered her sad eyes, looking out over the sea. "She told me she was afraid to send me here, even though my father had wanted her to. She said that once I was here, I probably couldn't leave. She wanted to keep me close to her."**

**"Typical," Mr. D said. "That's how they usually get killed. Young man, are you bidding or not?"**

"What an asshole!" Ella screamed at the book, no one bothering to tell her it isn't real.

**"What?" I asked.**

**He explained, impatiently, how you bid in pinochle, and so I did.**

**"I'm afraid there's too much to tell," Chiron said. "I'm afraid our usual orientation film won't be sufficient."**

"..Okay…"

**"Orientation film?" I asked.**

**"No," Chiron decided. "Well, Percy. You know your friend Grover is a satyr. You know-" he pointed to the horn in the shoe box- "that you have killed the Minotaur. No small feat, either, lad. What you may not know is that great powers are at work in your life. Gods- the forces you call the Greek gods- are very much alive."**

**I stared at the others around the table.**

**I waited for somebody to yell, **_**Not! **_**But all I got was Mr. D yelling, "Oh, a royal marriage. Trick! Trick!" He cackled as he tallied up his points.**

"Of course." Gazzy rolled his eyes, "I hope he loses"

**"Mr. D," Grover asked timidly, "if you're not going to eat it, could I have your Diet Coke can?"**

"Coke can? What's he going to do eat it?" Total asked.

**"Eh? Oh, all right."**

**Grover bit a huge shard out of the empty aluminum can and chewed it mournfully.**

**"Wait," I told Chiron. "You're telling me there's such a thing as god."**

We all laughed at Total's look of shock.

**"Well, now," Chiron said. "God- capital **_**G**_**, God. That's a different matter altogether. We shan't deal with the metaphysical."**

**"Metaphysical? But you were just talking about-"**

**"Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavors: the immortal gods of Olympus. That's a smaller matter."**

**"Smaller?"**

**"Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class."**

**"Zeus," I said. "Hera. Apollo. You mean them."**

**And there it was again, distant thunder on a cloud less day.**

**"Young man," said Mr. D, "I would really be less casual about throwing those names around, if I were you."**

**"But they're stories," I said. "They're- myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They're what people believed before there was science."**

**"Science!" Mr. D scoffed. "And tell me, Perseus Jackson"-I flinched when he said my real name, which I never told anybody- "what will people think of your 'science' two thousand years from now?" Mr. D continued. "Hmm? They will call it primitive mumbo jumbo. That's what. Oh, I love mortals- they have absolutely no sense of perspective. They think they've come **_**so-o-o **_**far. And have they, Chiron? Look at this boy and tell me."**

**I wasn't liking Mr. D much, but there was something about the way he called me mortal, as if... he wasn't. It was enough to put a lump in my throat, to suggest why Grover was dutifully minding his cards, chewing his soda can, and keeping his mouth shut.**

**"Percy," Chiron said, "you may choose to believe or not, but the fact is that **_**immortal **_**means immortal. Can you imagine that for a moment, never dying? Never fading? Existing, just as you are, for all time?"**

"That would be f*cking awesome!" Gazzy and Iggy both yelled with Nudge and Ella nodding.

"I don't think so," Angel said, "I mean everyone you know would be dead."

"True" the girls agreed.

"It's still awesome!" Iggy shouted.

**I was about to answer, off the top of my head, that it sounded like a pretty good deal, **

"See, he agrees." Gazzy nodded his head.

**but the tone of Chiron's voice made me hesitate.**

Gazzy paused.

**You mean, whether people believed in you or not," I said.**

**"Exactly," Chiron agreed. "If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, that some day people would call **_**you **_**a myth, just created to explain how little boys can get over losing their mothers?"**

"Ouch... cheap shot," Iggy said.

**My heart pounded. He was trying to make me angry for some reason, but I wasn't going to let him. I said, "I wouldn't like it. But I don't believe in gods."**

**"Oh, you'd better," Mr. D murmured. "Before one of them incinerates you."**

**Grover said, "P-please, sir. He's just lost his mother. He's in shock."**

**"A lucky thing, too," Mr. D grumbled, playing a card. "Bad enough I'm confined to this miserable job, working with boys who don't even believe.'"**

**He waved his hand and a goblet appeared on the table, as if the sunlight had bent, momentarily, and woven the air into glass. The goblet filled itself with red wine.**

Our mouths dropped. We've seen a lot of weird things, but wine appearing out of nowhere reached just about the top.

**My jaw dropped, but Chiron hardly looked up.**

**"Mr. D," he warned, "your restrictions."**

**Mr. D looked at the wine and feigned surprise.**

**"Dear me." He looked at the sky and yelled, "Old habits! Sorry!"**

**More thunder.**

**Mr. D waved his hand again, and the wineglass changed into a fresh can of Diet Coke. He sighed unhappily, popped the top of the soda, and went back to his card game.**

**Chiron winked at me. "Mr. D offended his father a while back, took a fancy to a wood nymph who had been declared off-limits."**

"No comment." even Iggy couldn't think of anything.

**"A wood nymph," I repeated, still staring at the Diet Coke can like it was from outer space.**

"Don't blame him."

**"Yes," Mr. D confessed. "Father loves to punish me. The first time, Prohibition. Ghastly! Absolutely horrid ten years! The second time- well, she really was pretty, and I couldn't stay away- the second time, he sent me here. Half-Blood Hill. Summer camp for brats like you. 'Be a better influence,' he told me. 'Work with youths rather than tearing them down.' Ha.' Absolutely unfair."**

"Sounds like punishment for them too."

**Mr. D sounded about six years old, like a pouting little kid.**

**"And ..." I stammered, "your father is ..."**

_**"Di immortales, **_**Chiron," Mr. D said. "I thought you taught this boy the basics. My father is Zeus, of course."**

**I ran through D names from Greek mythology. Wine. The skin of a tiger. The satyrs that all seemed to work here. The way Grover cringed, as if Mr. D were his master.**

**"You're Dionysus," I said. "The god of wine."**

"That explains the wine." Ella said slowly.

**Mr. D rolled his eyes. "What do they say, these days, Grover? Do the children say, 'Well, duh!'?"**

**"Y-yes, Mr. D."**

**"Then, well, duh! Percy Jackson. Did you think I was Aphrodite, perhaps?"**

"Isn't she the goddess of beauty and love?"

"Yes Nudge."

**"You're a god."**

**"Yes, child."**

**"A god. You."**

**He turned to look at me straight on, and I saw a kind of purplish fire in his eyes, a hint that this whiny, plump little man was only showing me the tiniest bit of his true nature. I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. I knew that if I pushed him, Mr. D would show me worse things. He would plant a disease in my brain that would leave me wearing a strait-jacket in a rubber room for the rest of my life.**

"Damn." Iggy whispered to himself.

"Still wont say 'sir' to him Iggy?" no answer.

**"Would you like to test me, child?" he said quietly.**

**"No. No, sir."**

**The fire died a little. He turned back to his card game. "I believe I win."**

**"Not quite, Mr. D," Chiron said. He set down a straight, tallied the points, and said, "The game goes to me."**

**I thought Mr. D was going to vaporize Chiron right out of his wheelchair, but he just sighed through his nose, as if he were used to being beaten by the Latin teacher. He got up, and Grover rose, too.**

**"I'm tired," Mr. D said. "I believe I'll take a nap before the sing-along tonight. But first, Grover, we need to talk, **_**again, **_**about your less-than-perfect performance on this assignment."**

"Ouch"

**Grover's face beaded with sweat. "Y-yes, sir."**

**Mr. D turned to me. "Cabin eleven, Percy Jackson. And mind your manners."**

**He swept into the farmhouse, Grover following miserably.**

**"Will Grover be okay?" I asked Chiron.**

**Chiron nodded, though he looked a bit troubled. "Old Dionysus isn't really mad. He just hates his job. He's been ... ah, grounded, I guess you would say, and he can't stand waiting another century before he's allowed to go back to Olympus."**

**"Mount Olympus," I said. "You're telling me there really is a palace there?"**

**"Well now, there's Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there's the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It's still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, Percy, just as the gods do."**

**"You mean the Greek gods are here? Like ... in **_**America**_**?"**

**"Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West."**

"The what?"

**"The what?"**

Que laughter.

**"Come now, Percy. What you call 'Western civilization.' Do you think it's just an abstract concept? No, it's a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn't possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know- or as I hope you know, since you passed my course- the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps- Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on- but the same forces, the same gods."**

"Oh."

**"And then they died."**

"Didn't he just meet one of the gods?"

**"Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture.**

**People do not forget the gods. Every place they've ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, Percy, of course they are now in your United States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not- and believe me, plenty of people weren't very fond of Rome, either- America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are here."**

**It was all too much, especially the fact that **_**I **_**seemed to be included in Chiron's **_**we, **_**as if I were part of some club.**

Duh was he not paying attention?

**"Who are you, Chiron? Who ... who am I?"**

**Chiron smiled. He shifted his weight as if he were going to get up out of his wheelchair, but I knew that was impossible. He was paralyzed from the waist down.**

**"Who are you?" he mused. "Well, that's the question we all want answered, isn't it? But for now, we should get you a bunk in cabin eleven. There will be new friends to 'meet. And plenty of time for lessons tomorrow. Besides, there will be smores at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore chocolate."**

**And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, **

Iggy silently snickered.

**but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached.**

**I stared at the horse who had just sprung from the wheelchair: a huge white stallion. But where its neck should be was the upper body of my Latin teacher, smoothly grafted to the horse's trunk.**

**"What a relief," the centaur said. "I'd been cooped up in there so long, my fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now, come, Percy Jackson. Let's meet the other campers."**

"So is he like us?" Angel asked.

"No, he likes a satyr, something from Greek mythology." Ella informed her

"Oh"

"Ella, didn't they say this was real?"

"Shut up Iggy, it's just a book" she retorted.


	7. I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom

**Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson or Maximum Ride.**

Chapter 7

Max's POV

"**I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom**"

Angel looked up. "What does that mean?"

Iggy and Gazzy were to busy laughing, Fang was silently laughing, Nudge looked like she wanted to ask the same question, and me and Ella share a smile. "I'm sure it will explain later sweetie."

**Once I got over the fact that my Latin teacher was a horse, we had a nice tour, though I was careful not to walk behind him. I'd done pooper-scooper patrol in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade a few times, and, I'm sorry, I did not trust Chiron's back end the way I trusted his front.**

Everyone was laughing at that.

Leave up to this random kid to think that up.

**We passed the volleyball pit. Several of the campers nudged each other. One pointed to the minotaur horn I was carrying. Another said, "That's **_**him**_**."**

"And that's where his ego will grow." Nudge stated. But before she could say more, angel continued.

**Most of the campers were older than me. Their satyr friends were bigger than Grover, all of them trotting around in orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts, with nothing else to cover their bare shaggy hindquarters. I wasn't normally shy, but the way they stared at me made me uncomfortable. I felt like they were expecting me to do a flip or something.**

"Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip!" Iggy chanted slowly then getting louder. That was until Ella slapped him up side the head.

**I looked back at the farmhouse. It was a lot bigger than I'd realized—four stories tall, sky blue with white trim, like an upscale seaside resort. I was checking out the brass eagle weather vane on top when something caught my eye, a shadow in the uppermost window of the attic gable. Something had moved the curtain, just for a second, and I got the distinct impression I was being watched.**

Angel paused deep in though before continuing.

**"What's up there?" I asked Chiron.**

**He looked where I was pointing, and his smile faded. "Just the attic."**

**"Somebody lives there?"**

**"No," he said with finality. "Not a single living thing."**

"Does anybody else wonder why he says 'a single _living_ thing?"

"Max," Iggy tried to act as if he were speaking to a slow person. My eyes narrowed. "What else would be up there?"

"You never know." I mumbled.

**I got the feeling he was being truthful. But I was also sure something had moved that curtain.**

**"Come along, Percy," Chiron said, his lighthearted tone now a little forced. "Lots to see."**

**We walked through the strawberry fields, where campers were picking bushels of berries while a satyr played a tune on a reed pipe.**

**Chiron told me the camp grew a nice crop for export to New York restaurants and Mount Olympus. "It pays our expenses," he explained. "And the strawberries take almost no effort."**

**He said Mr. D had this effect on fruit-bearing plants: they just went crazy when he was around. It worked best with wine grapes, but Mr. D was restricted from growing those, so they grew strawberries instead.**

"Mr.D …" Ella whispered, as if trying to remember where she heard it.

**I watched the satyr playing his pipe. His music was causing lines of bugs to leave the strawberry patch in every direction, like refugees fleeing a fire. I wondered if Grover could work that kind of magic with music.**

"That's kind of useless." Iggy pointed out.

"No it isn't." Total half-growled, scratching behind his ear.

"We are giving you a bath later." In my no nonsense voice.

**I wondered if he was still inside the farmhouse, getting chewed out by Mr. D.**

**"Grover won't get in too much trouble, will he?" I asked Chiron. "I mean ... he was a good protector. Really."**

"Yea, and it's your fault. If you hadn't left him he wouldn't be in trouble." Fang pointed out

"Yea but he was stinking up for him, knowing it was his fault." Nudge argued. "He's to correct his mistake."

**Chiron sighed. He shed his tweed jacket and draped it over his horses back like a saddle. "Grover has big dreams, Percy. Perhaps bigger than are reasonable.**

**To reach his goal, he must first demonstrate great courage by succeeding as a keeper, finding a new camper and bringing him safely to Half-Blood Hill."**

**"But he did that!"**

**"I might agree with you," Chiron said. "But it is not my place to judge. Dionysus and the Council of Cloven Elders must decide. I'm afraid they might not see this assignment as a success. After all, Grover lost you in New York. Then there's the unfortunate ... ah ... fate of your mother. And the fact that Grover was unconscious when you dragged him over the property line. The council might question whether this shows any courage on Grover's part."**

"It wasn't his fault!" Angel stuck up.

**I wanted to protest. None of what happened was Grover's fault. I also felt really, really guilty. If I hadn't given Grover the slip at the bus station, he might not have gotten in trouble.**

**"He'll get a second chance, won't he?"**

"Yea, see. He'll get a second chance." I smiled confidently.

**Chiron winced. "I'm afraid that **_**was **_**Grover's second chance, Percy.**

My smiled was wiped away.

**The council was not anxious to give him another, either, after what happened the first time, five years ago. Olympus knows, I advised him to wait longer before trying again. He's still so small for his age..."**

**"How old is he?"**

**"Oh, twenty-eight."**

"Twenty-eight? But…How?" Iggy looked surprised.

**"What! And he's in sixth grade?"**

**"Satyrs mature half as fast as humans, Percy. Grover has been the equivalent of a middle school student for the past six years."**

"That would be miserable." Ella shook her head.

**"That's horrible."**

**"Quite," Chiron agreed. "At any rate, Grover is a late bloomer, even by satyr standards, and not yet very accomplished at woodland magic. Alas, he was anxious to pursue his dream. Perhaps now he will find some other career..."**

**"That's not fair," I said. "What happened the first time? Was it really so bad?"**

"It couldn't be that bad could it?"

**Chiron looked away quickly. "Let's move along, shall we?"**

"I'm going to take that as a yes."

**But I wasn't quite ready to let the subject drop. Something had occurred to me when Chiron talked about my mother's fate, as if he were intentionally avoiding the word **_**death. **_**The beginnings of an idea—a tiny, hopeful fire—started forming in my mind.**

"This can't be good" Gazzy fell back onto the bed.

**Chiron," I said. "If the gods and Olympus and all that are real ..."**

**"Yes, child?"**

**"Does that mean the Underworld is real, too?"**

"Um, duh?"

**Chiron's expression darkened.**

**"Yes, child." He paused, as if choosing his words care fully. "There is a place where spirits go after death. But for now ... until we know more ... I would urge you to put that out of your mind."**

**"What do you mean, 'until we know more'?"**

"I don't think that's putting it out of your mind." I smirked

**"Come, Percy. Let's see the woods."**

"He sucks at changing topics."

**As we got closer, I realized how huge the forest was. It took up at least a quarter of the valley, with trees so tall and thick, you could imagine nobody had been in there since the Native Americans.**

**Chiron said, "The woods are stocked, if you care to try your luck, but go armed."**

**"Stocked with what?" I asked. "Armed with what?"**

**"You'll see. Capture the flag is Friday night. Do you have your own sword and shield?"**

"He's new isn't he? I don't think he does then."

**"My own—?"**

**"No," Chiron said. "I don't suppose you do. I think a size five will do. I'll visit the armory later."**

**I wanted to ask what kind of summer camp had an armory, but there was too much else to think about, so the tour continued. We saw the archery range, the canoeing lake, the stables (which Chiron didn't seem to like very much),**

**the javelin range, the sing-along amphitheater, and the arena where Chiron said they held sword and spear fights.**

**"Sword and spear fights?" I asked.**

**"Cabin challenges and all that," he explained. "Not lethal. Usually. Oh, yes, and there's the mess hall."**

"Usually?"

"Shut up Iggy. Continue Angel, I ant to get this book over with in a week."

**Chiron pointed to an outdoor pavilion framed in white Grecian columns on a hill overlooking the sea. There were a dozen stone picnic tables. No roof. No walls.**

**"What do you do when it rains?" I asked.**

**Chiron looked at me as if I'd gone a little weird.**

"They still have to eat." Angel rolled her eyes.

**"We still have to eat, don't we?" I decided to drop the subject.**

We all laughed at the irony of it.

**Finally, he showed me the cabins. There were twelve of them, nestled in the woods by the lake. They were arranged in a U, with two at the base and five in a row on either side. And they were without doubt the most bizarre collection of buildings I'd ever seen.**

**Except for the fact that each had a large brass number above the door (odds on the left side, evens on the right), they looked absolutely nothing alike. Number nine had smokestacks, like a tiny factory. **

"Mine!" Gazzy yelled. Iggy smiled as if agreeing.

**Number four had tomato vines on the walls and a roof made out of real grass. Seven seemed to be made of solid gold, which gleamed so much in the sunlight it was almost impossible to look at.**

**They all faced a commons area about the size of a soccer field, dotted with Greek statues, fountains, flower beds, and a couple of basketball hoops (which were more my speed).**

**In the center of the field was a huge stone-lined firepit. Even though it was a warm afternoon, the hearth smoldered. A girl about nine years old was tending the flames, poking the coals with a stick.**

"Yup," I said sarcastically. "That totally isn't weird."

**The pair of cabins at the head of the field, numbers one and two, looked like his-and-hers mausoleums, big white marble boxes with heavy columns in front. Cabin one was the biggest and bulkiest of the twelve. Its polished bronze doors shimmered like a hologram, so that from different angles lightning bolts seemed to streak across them.**

"That would be mine's." I nodded thinking how cool that would look.

**Cabin two was more graceful somehow, with slimmer columns garlanded with pomegranates and flowers. The walls were carved with images of peacocks.**

**"Zeus and Hera?" I guessed.**

**"Correct," Chiron said.**

**"Their cabins look empty."**

**"Several of the cabins are. That's true. No one ever stays in one or two."**

**Okay. So each cabin had a different god, like a mascot.**

"So yours would be Zeus, Max." My sister grinned.

"That would explain that attitude you have, Max." I was trying not to laugh along with the others.

That was before we heard thunder in the distance, weird.

**Twelve cabins for the twelve Olympians. But why would some be empty?**

**I stopped in front of the first cabin on the left, cabin three.**

**It wasn't high and mighty like cabin one, but long and low and solid. The outer walls were of rough gray stone studded with pieces of seashell and coral, as if the slabs had been hewn straight from the bottom of the ocean floor. I peeked inside the open doorway and Chiron said, "Oh, I wouldn't do that!"**

**Before he could pull me back, I caught the salty scent of the interior, like the wind on the shore at Montauk. The interior walls glowed like abalone.**

"Poseidon?"

**There were six empty bunk beds with silk sheets turned down. But there was no sign anyone had ever slept there. The place felt so sad and lonely, I was glad when Chiron put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Come along, Percy."**

"Awe…" most of the girls cooed.

**Most of the other cabins were crowded with campers.**

**Number five was bright red—a real nasty paint job, as if the color had been splashed on with buckets and fists.**

**The roof was lined with barbed wire. A stuffed wild boar's head hung over the doorway, and its eyes seemed to follow me. Inside I could see a bunch of mean-looking kids, girls and boys, arm wrestling and arguing with each other while rock music blared. **

"Never mind, that's Max's." Iggy laughed.

I leaned over and punched him on the shoulder. I left him rubbing the bruise I gave muttering under his breath.

**The loudest was a girl maybe thirteen or fourteen. She wore a size XXXL CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirt under a camouflage jacket. She zeroed in on me and gave me an evil sneer. She reminded me of Nancy Bobofit, though the camper girl was much bigger and tougher looking, and her hair was long and stringy, and brown instead of red.**

"Yea, defiantly Max." Gazzy laughed dodging the pillow I through at him.

**I kept walking, trying to stay clear of Chiron's hooves. "We haven't seen any other centaurs," I observed.**

**"No," said Chiron sadly. "My kinsmen are a wild and barbaric folk, I'm afraid. You might encounter them in the wilderness, or at major sporting events. But you won't see any here."**

"I soo want to meet them! Why couldn't we see them at that game we went to?" Iggy complained.

"Iggy, there not real." I burst him bubble.

**"You said your name was Chiron. Are you really ..."**

**He smiled down at me. **_**"The **_**Chiron from the stories? Trainer of Hercules and all that? Yes, Percy, I am."**

**"But, shouldn't you be dead?"**

"And that won't bother him? I wouldn't want to ask that. '"But, shouldn't you be dead?"' that's like commenting the person looks old, of like they-"

Gazzy managed to cover her mouth.

**Chiron paused, as if the question intrigued him. "I honestly don't know about **_**should **_**be. The truth is, I **_**can't **_**be dead. You see, eons ago the gods granted my wish. I could continue the work I loved. I could be a teacher of heroes as long as humanity needed me. I gained much from that wish ... and I gave up much. But I'm still here, so I can only assume I'm still needed."**

"That would really really suck." Ella couldn't help but saying.

**I thought about being a teacher for three thousand years. It wouldn't have made my Top Ten Things to Wish For list.**

**"Doesn't it ever get boring?"**

**"No, no," he said. "Horribly depressing, at times, but never boring."**

**"Why depressing?"**

**Chiron seemed to turn hard of hearing again.**

**"Oh, look," he said. "Annabeth is waiting for us."**

"I think someone needs to teach him how to change the subject better," Angel said.

**The blond girl I'd met at the Big House was reading a book in front of the last cabin on the left, number eleven.**

**When we reached her, she looked me over critically, like she was still thinking about how much I drooled.**

Everybody snickered.

**I tried to see what she was reading, but I couldn't make out the title. I thought my dyslexia was acting up. Then I realized the title wasn't even English. The letters looked Greek to me. I mean, literally Greek.**

I snorted at the pun as everyone else rolled their eyes.

**There were pictures of temples and statues and different kinds of columns, like those in an architecture book.**

**"Annabeth," Chiron said, "I have masters' archery class at noon. Would you take Percy from here?"**

**"Yes, sir."**

**"Cabin eleven," Chiron told me, gesturing toward the doorway. "Make yourself at home."**

**Out of all the cabins, eleven looked the most like a regular old summer camp cabin, with the emphasis on **_**old. **_**The threshold was worn down, the brown paint peeling. Over the doorway was one of those doctor's symbols, a winged pole with two snakes wrapped around it. What did they call it... ?**

"A caduceus," Fang stated.

**A caduceus.**

**Inside, it was packed with people, both boys and girls, way more than the number of bunk beds. Sleeping bags were spread all over on the floor. It looked like a gym where the Red Cross had set up an evacuation center.**

**Chiron didn't go in. The door was too low for him. But when the campers saw him they all stood and bowed respectfully.**

**"Well, then," Chiron said. "Good luck, Percy. I'll see you at dinner."**

**He galloped away toward the archery range.**

**I stood in the doorway, looking at the kids. They weren't bowing anymore. They were staring at me, sizing me up. I knew this routine. I'd gone through it at enough schools.**

**"Well?" Annabeth prompted. "Go on."**

**So naturally I tripped coming in the door and made a total fool of myself.**

Everyone laughed.

**There were some snickers from the campers, but none of them said anything.**

**Annabeth announced, "Percy Jackson, meet cabin eleven."**

**"Regular or undetermined?" somebody asked.**

**I didn't know what to say, but Annabeth said, "Undetermined."**

**Everybody groaned.**

**A guy who was a little older than the rest came forward.**

I seen Ella and Nudge crossing their fingers and muttering description under their breath.

**"Now, now, campers. That's what we're here for. Welcome, Percy. You can have that spot on the floor, right over there."**

**The guy was about nineteen, and he looked pretty cool. He was tall and muscular, with short-cropped sandy hair and a friendly smile. He wore an orange tank top, cutoffs, sandals, and a leather necklace with five different-colored clay beads. The only thing unsettling about his appearance was a thick white scar that ran from just beneath his right eye to his jaw, like an old knife slash.**

They signed thoughtfully, while I held back a laugh.

**"This is Luke," Annabeth said, and her voice sounded different somehow. I glanced over and could've sworn she was blushing.**

**She saw me looking, and her expression hardened again. "He's your counselor for now."**

**"For now?" I asked.**

**"You're undetermined," Luke explained patiently. "They don't know what cabin to put you in, so you're here. Cabin eleven takes all newcomers, all visitors. Naturally, we would. Hermes, our patron, is the god of travelers."**

**I looked at the tiny section of floor they'd given me. I had nothing to put there to mark it as my own, no luggage, no clothes, no sleeping bag. Just the Minotaur's horn. I thought about setting that down, but then I remembered that Hermes was also the god of thieves.**

"That's my cabin." Iggy grinned.

**I looked around at the campers' faces, some sullen and suspicious, some grinning stupidly, some eyeing me as if they were waiting for a chance to pick my pockets.**

"Iggy you suck at pick pocketing." I pointed out.

"Yea, but they're also prankers."

"Never mind, that's they perfect cabin for you."

**"How long will I be here?" I asked.**

**"Good question," Luke said. "Until you're determined."**

**"How long will that take?"**

**The campers all laughed.**

**"Come on," Annabeth told me. "I'll show you the volleyball court."**

**"I've already seen it."**

**"Come on." She grabbed my wrist and dragged me outside. I could hear the kids of cabin eleven laughing behind me.**

"Meanies" From the one and only seven year old.

**When we were a few feet away, Annabeth said, "Jackson, you have to do better than that."**

**"What?"**

**She rolled her eyes and mumbled under her breath, "I can't believe I thought you were the one."**

"The one?"

**"What's your problem?" I was getting angry now. "All I know is, I kill some bull guy—"**

**"Don't talk like that!" Annabeth told me. "You know how many kids at this camp wish they'd had your chance?"**

**"To get killed?"**

**"To fight the Minotaur! What do you think we train for?"**

"Um I'd rather we just train and not have to fight anything." Nudge confessed.

Guilt washed through me. They never got a normal life, always on the run. Angel smiled towards me, shaking her head. Creepy little mind reader. She glared at me in return.

**I shook my head. "Look, if the thing I fought really was **_**the **_**Minotaur, the same one in the stories ..."**

**"Yes."**

**"Then there's only one."**

**"Yes."**

**"And he died, like, a gajillion years ago, right? Theseus killed him in the labyrinth. So ..."**

**"Monsters don't die, Percy. They can be killed. But they don't die."**

**"Oh, thanks. That clears it up."**

**"They don't have souls, like you and me. You can dispel them for a while, maybe even for a whole lifetime if you're lucky. But they are primal forces. Chiron calls them arche types. Eventually, they re-form."**

**I thought about Mrs. Dodds. "You mean if I killed one, accidentally, with a sword—"**

**"The Fur ... I mean, your math teacher. That's right. She's still out there. You just made her very, very mad."**

"So run for your life now."

**"How did you know about Mrs. Dodds?"**

**"You talk in your sleep."**

**"You almost called her something. A Fury? They're Hades' torturers, right?"**

**Annabeth glanced nervously at the ground, as if she expected it to open up and swallow her.**

"So this goes under 'don't say their names'."

**"You shouldn't call them by name, even here. We call them the Kindly Ones, if we have to speak of them at all."**

**"Look, is there anything we **_**can **_**say without it thundering?" I sounded whiny, even to myself, but right then I didn't care. "Why do I have to stay in cabin eleven, anyway? Why is everybody so crowded together? There are plenty of empty bunks right over there."**

**I pointed to the first few cabins, and Annabeth turned pale. "You don't just choose a cabin, Percy. It depends on who your parents are. Or ... your parent."**

**She stared at me, waiting for me to get it.**

**"My mom is Sally Jackson," I said.**

**"She works at the candy store in Grand Central Station. At least, she used to."**

**"I'm sorry about your mom, Percy. But that's not what I mean. I'm talking about your other parent. Your dad."**

**"He's dead. I never knew him."**

**Annabeth sighed. Clearly, she'd had this conversation before with other kids.**

"I bet she has." Total licked his paws.

**"Your father's not dead, Percy."**

**"How can you say that? You know him?"**

**"No, of course not."**

**"Then how can you say—"**

**"Because I know **_**you.**_ **You wouldn't be here if you weren't one of us."**

**"You don't know anything about me."**

**"No?" She raised an eyebrow. "I bet you moved around from school to school. I bet you were kicked out of a lot of them."**

**"How—"**

**"Diagnosed with dyslexia. Probably ADHD, too."**

"Yup that totally isn't creepy. What are you a stalker?" I snorted.

**I tried to swallow my embarrassment. "What does that have to do with anything?"**

**"Taken together, it's almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you read, right? That's because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek.**

**And the ADHD—you're impulsive, can't sit still in the classroom. That's your battle field reflexes. In a real fight, they'd keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that's because you see too much, Percy, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal's. Of course the teachers want you medicated. Most of them are monsters. They don't want you seeing them for what they are."**

**"You sound like ... you went through the same thing?"**

**"Most of the kids here did. If you weren't like us, you couldn't have survived the Minotaur, much less the ambrosia and nectar."**

**"Ambrosia and nectar."**

**"The food and drink we were giving you to make you better. That stuff would've killed a normal kid. It would've turned your blood to fire and your bones to sand and you'd be dead. Face it. You're a half-blood."**

**A half-blood.**

"So she isn't a stalker."

**I was reeling with so many questions I didn't know where to start.**

**Then a husky voice yelled, "Well! A newbie!"**

"Ah, this should be interesting," Gazzy said, rubbing his hands together.

**I looked over. The big girl from the ugly red cabin was sauntering toward us. She had three other girls behind her, all big and ugly and mean looking like her, all wearing camo jackets.**

**"Clarisse," Annabeth sighed. "Why don't you go polish your spear or something?"**

**"Sure, Miss Princess," the big girl said. "So I can run you through with it Friday night."**

"What's Friday?" Iggy interrupted.

"Don't you pay attention? Capture the flag."

_**''Erre es korakas!"**_ **Annabeth said, which I somehow under stood was Greek for 'Go to the crows!' though I had a feeling it was a worse curse than it sounded. "You don't stand a chance."**

**"We'll pulverize you," Clarisse said, but her eye twitched. Perhaps she wasn't sure she could follow through on the threat. She turned toward me. "Who's this little runt?"**

**"Percy Jackson," Annabeth said, "meet Clarisse, Daughter of Ares."**

**I blinked. "Like ... the war god?"**

"No, beauty." Someone said sarcastically.

**Clarisse sneered. "You got a problem with that?"**

**"No," I said, recovering my wits. "It explains the bad smell."**

Everyone chuckled at that.

**Clarisse growled. "We got an initiation ceremony for newbies, Prissy."**

**"Percy."**

**"Whatever. Come on, I'll show you."**

**"Clarisse—" Annabeth tried to say.**

**"Stay out of it, wise girl."**

**Annabeth looked pained, but she did stay out of it,**

**and I didn't really want her help. I was the new kid. I had to earn my own rep.**

**I handed Annabeth my minotaur horn and got ready to fight, but before I knew it, Clarisse had me by the neck and was dragging me toward a cinder-block building that I knew immediately was the bathroom.**

**I was kicking and punching. I'd been in plenty of fights before, but this big girl Clarisse had hands like iron. She dragged me into the girls' bathroom. There was a line of toilets on one side and a line of shower stalls down the other. It smelled just like any public bathroom, and I was thinking—as much as I **_**could **_**think with Clarisse ripping my hair out—that if this place belonged to the gods, they should've been able to afford classier johns.**

"He didn't seriously think that, did he?" Gazzy asked laughing along with the others.

**Clarisse's friends were all laughing, and I was trying to find the strength I'd used to fight the Minotaur, but it just wasn't there.**

**"Like he's 'Big Three' material," Clarisse said as she pushed me toward one of the toilets. "Yeah, right. Minotaur probably fell over laughing, he was so stupid looking."**

**Her friends snickered.**

**Annabeth stood in the corner, watching through her fingers.**

**Clarisse bent me over on my knees and started pushing my head toward the toilet bowl. It reeked like rusted pipes and, well, like what goes into toilets. I strained to keep my head up. I was looking at the scummy water, thinking, I will not go into that. I won't.**

**Then something happened. I felt a tug in the pit of my stomach. I heard the plumbing rumble, the pipes shudder. Clarisse's grip on my hair loosened. Water shot out of the toilet, making an arc straight over my head, and the next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the bathroom tiles with Clarisse screaming behind me.**

Everyone was already laughing though they were hoping more was to come.

**I turned just as water blasted out of the toilet again, hitting Clarisse straight in the face so hard it pushed her down onto her butt.**

"Nice!" Iggy laughed.

"Disgusting!" Ella groaned.

**The water stayed on her like the spray from a fire hose, pushing her backward into a shower stall.**

**She struggled, gasping, and her friends started coming toward her.**

"Wouldn't it just attack them too?"

**But then the other toilets exploded, too, and six more streams of toilet water blasted them back. The showers acted up, too, and together all the fixtures sprayed the camouflage girls right out of the bathroom, spinning them around like pieces of garbage being washed away.**

**As soon as they were out the door, I felt the tug in my gut lessen, and the water shut off as quickly as it had started.**

**The entire bathroom was flooded. Annabeth hadn't been spared.**

"Ewwww!" Ella and Nudge squealed.

**She was dripping wet, but she hadn't been pushed out the door. She was standing in exactly the same place, staring at me in shock.**

**I looked down and realized I was sitting in the only dry spot in the whole room. There was a circle of dry floor around me. I didn't have one drop of water on my clothes. Nothing.**

**I stood up, my legs shaky.**

**Annabeth said, "How did you ..."**

**"I don't know."**

**We walked to the door. Outside, Clarisse and her friends were sprawled in the mud, and a bunch of other campers had gathered around to gawk. Clarisse's hair was flattened across her face. Her camouflage jacket was sopping and she smelled like sewage. She gave me a look of absolute hatred. "You are dead, new boy. You are totally dead."**

"Wow, that's so scary," Fang chuckled.

**I probably should have let it go, but I said, "You want to gargle with toilet water again, Clarisse? Close your mouth."**

Everyone laughed.

**Her friends had to hold her back. They dragged her toward cabin five, while the other campers made way to avoid her flailing feet.**

**Annabeth stared at me. I couldn't tell whether she was just grossed out or angry at me for dousing her.**

**"What?" I demanded. "What are you thinking?"**

**"I'm thinking," she said, "that I want you on my team for capture the flag."**

"So that's why he's the 'Supreme Lord of the Bathroom'" Angel laughed along with the rest of us.

"Here," she tossed the book at me.

"My Dinner Goes up in Smoke," I started.

_So what do you guys think?_

_Look down_

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_Further _

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_Go on, press it_

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	8. My Dinner Goes up in Smoke

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything **

Max's POV

"**My Dinner Goes up in Smoke," **I started.

**Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever I went, campers pointed at me and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just staring at Annabeth, who was still pretty much dripping wet.**

"I think it's safe to say it was probably a mixture of both." Ella though out loud.

**She showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man),**

"Goat-man? Who would care about a goat-man?" Iggy snorted.

"Actually," Ella sucked in a breath "I think would be Pan, who has to do with nature."

"Pam, it isn't that a cooking spray?" Gazzy looked lost.

Ella signed in patience. "Pan, as in P-A-N, not Pam."

"Oh"

**and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn't get to the top fast enough.**

"That would be really really cool." Iggy said.

"Can-"

"No!"

"But-"

"I said NO!"

"But it would be awesome, and scary and thrilling, and"

"And deadly. The final and is no, Gazzy." I could tell he still hadn't given it up, and Iggy looked like he would help him, great. Note sarcasm.

**Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.**

**"I've got training to do," Annabeth said flatly. "Dinner's at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall."**

**"Annabeth, I'm sorry about the toilets."**

**"Whatever."**

**"It wasn't my fault."**

"You didn't just seriously say that," Nudge said, shaking her head in disappointment.

**She looked at me skeptically, and I realized it **_**was **_**my fault. **

"No shit."

**I'd made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn't understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.**

"One…..with….the …..plumbing…" Total managed to get out between laugher with the rest of us.

**"You need to talk to the Oracle," Annabeth said.**

**"Who?"**

**"Not who. What.**

"How does a what answer back?" Angel looked really adorable with a confused expression. She glared at me. _I am not adorable! _She said viscously in my head. _Whatever, just get out of my head! _Stupid dump mind reader. _Hey!_

**The Oracle. I'll ask Chiron."**

**I stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once.**

Same here buddy, same here.

**I wasn't expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the base of the pier, about twenty feet below.**

"Come on, descriptions descriptions!" Iggy sorta kinda yelled with eager. Pig.

**They wore blue jeans and shimmering green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend.**

**I didn't know what else to do. I waved back.**

**"Don't encourage them," Annabeth warned. "Naiads are terrible flirts."**

"Mmm, I would love to meet them." the one and only Iggy.

**"Naiads," I repeated, feeling completely overwhelmed. "That's it. I want to go home now."**

**Annabeth frowned. "Don't you get it, Percy? You **_**are **_**home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us."**

**"You mean, mentally disturbed kids?"**

"So you just called yourself mentally disturbed?" Gazzy laughed with the rest of us.

**I mean **_**not human. **_**Not totally human, anyway. Half-human."**

**"Half-human and half-what?"**

"Have she not said this already? One of your parents is a greek god! Don't you ever pay attention? She's mentioned it about half a million times!" Before Nudge could say more, I continued.

**"I think you know."**

**I didn't want to admit it, but I was afraid I did. I felt a tingling in my limbs, a sensation I sometimes felt when my mom talked about my dad.**

**"God," I said. "Half-god."**

"Finally! He confesses it!"

**Annabeth nodded. "Your father isn't dead, Percy. He's one of the Olympians."**

**"That's ... crazy."**

**"Is it? What's the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they've changed their habits in the last few millennia?"**

**"But those are just—" I almost said **_**myths **_**again. Then I remembered Chiron's warning that in two thousand years, **_**I **_**might be considered a myth.**

"I see it didn't take too long." Fang snickered. He speaks! I heard angel giggle from across the room. Fang looked confused for a moment, the glared at me. Angel must have sold me out. More giggles. Yep.

**"But if all the kids here are half-gods—"**

**"Demigods," Annabeth said. "That's the official term. Or half-bloods."**

**"Then who's your dad?"**

**Her hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling I'd just trespassed on a sensitive subject.**

"That's so sexists! It could be her mother!" my sister Ella interrupted me.

**"My dad is a professor at West Point," she said. "I haven't seen him since I was very small. He teaches American history."**

**"He's human."**

**"What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that?"**

"She agrees."

**"Who's your mom, then?"**

**"Cabin six."**

**"Meaning?"**

**Annabeth straightened. "Athena. Goddess of wisdom and battle."**

**Okay, I thought. Why not?**

"We can all agree that she can no way be Max's mom, agreed?" Iggy cracked up. I threw the pillow next to me. Bingo! Target hit. Iggy falls to the ground, rubbing his head.

**"And my dad?"**

**"Undetermined," Annabeth said, "like I told you before. Nobody knows."**

**"Except my mother. She knew."**

**"Maybe not, Percy. Gods don't always reveal their identities."**

**"My dad would have. He loved her."**

**Annabeth gave me a cautious look. She didn't want to burst my bubble.**

**"Maybe you're right. Maybe he'll send a sign. That's the only way to know for sure: your father has to send you a sign claiming you as his son. Sometimes it happens."**

**"You mean sometimes it doesn't?"**

"That's so sad." Ella said softly, with Nudge and Angel agreeing with her.

**Annabeth ran her palm along the rail. "The gods are busy. They have a lot of kids and they don't always ... Well, sometimes they don't care about us, Percy. They ignore us."**

"That's so retarded!" I infuriously growled

**I thought about some of the kids I'd seen in the Hermes cabin, teenagers who looked sullen and depressed, as if they were waiting for a call that would never come. I'd known kids like that at Yancy Academy, shuffled off to boarding school by rich parents who didn't have the time to deal with them. But gods should behave better.**

**"So I'm stuck here," I said. "That's it? For the rest of my life?"**

**"It depends," Annabeth said. "Some campers only stay the summer. If you're a child of Aphrodite or Demeter,** **you're probably not a real powerful force. The monsters might ignore you, so you can get by with a few months of summer training and live in the mortal world the rest of the year. But for some of us, it's too dangerous to leave. **

I wonder why some attract monsters and others don't. I mean there basically the same.

**We're year-rounders. In the mortal world, we attract monsters. They sense us. They come to challenge us. Most of the time, they'll ignore us until we're old enough to cause trouble—about ten or eleven years old, but after that, most demigods either make their way here, or they get killed off. A few manage to survive in the outside world and become famous. Believe me, if I told you the names, you'd know them. **

"I wonder who is like that."

**Some don't even realize they're demigods. But very, very few are like that."**

**"So monsters can't get in here?"**

**Annabeth shook her head. "Not unless they're intentionally stocked in the woods or specially summoned by somebody on the inside."**

**"Why would anybody want to summon a monster?"**

**"Practice fights. Practical jokes."**

**"Practical jokes?"**

"The best jokes ever!" Iggy and Gazzy high-fived.

**"The point is, the borders are sealed to keep mortals and monsters out. From the outside, mortals look into the valley and see nothing unusual, just a strawberry farm."**

"So basically we might have flown over it and not even noticed? Cool" Total vocalized.

**"So ... you're a year-rounder?"**

**Annabeth nodded. From under the collar of her T-shirt she pulled a leather necklace with five clay beads of different colors. It was just like Luke's, except Annabeth's also had a big gold ring strung on it, like a college ring.**

**"I've been here since I was seven," she said. "Every August, on the last day of summer session, you get a bead for surviving another year. I've been here longer than most of the counselors, and they're all in college."**

"Why so young?"

**"Why did you come so young?"**

Laughter

**She twisted the ring on her necklace. "None of your business."**

**"Oh." I stood there for a minute in uncomfortable silence. "So ... I could just walk out of here right now if I wanted to?"**

**"It would be suicide, but you could, with Mr. D's or Chiron's permission. But they wouldn't give permission until the end of the summer session unless ..."**

**"Unless?"**

**"You were granted a quest. But that hardly ever happens. The last time …"**

"The last time….?" Nudge was dieing to know more.

**Her voice trailed off. I could tell from her tone that the last time hadn't gone well.**

**"Back in the sick room," I said, "when you were feeding me that stuff—"**

**"Ambrosia."**

**"Yeah. You asked me something about the summer solstice."**

**Annabeth's shoulders tensed. "So you **_**do **_**know some thing?"**

**"Well... no. Back at my old school, I overheard Grover and Chiron talking about it. Grover mentioned the summer solstice. He said something like we didn't have much time, because of the deadline. What did that mean?"**

**She clenched her fists.**

"You're pissing her off Percy." Iggy said in a singy voice.

**"I wish I knew. Chiron and the satyrs, they know, but they won't tell me. Something is wrong in Olympus, something pretty major. Last time I was there, everything seemed so **_**normal**_**."**

**"You've been to Olympus?"**

**"Some of us year-rounders—Luke and Clarisse and I and a few others—we took a field trip during winter solstice. That's when the gods have their big annual council."**

**"But... how did you get there?"**

**"The Long Island Railroad, of course. You get off at Penn Station. Empire State Building, special elevator to the six hundredth floor." She looked at me like she was sure I must know this already.**

"There are six hundred floors?"

"No…"

"But-"

"Let Max read, maybe it will say." Fang retorted to Gazzy.

**"You **_**are **_**a New Yorker, right?"**

**"Oh, sure." As far as I knew, there were only a hundred and two floors in the Empire State Building, but I decided not to point that out.**

**"Right after we visited," Annabeth continued, "the weather got weird, as if the gods had started fighting. A couple of times since, I've overheard satyrs talking. The best I can figure out is that something important was stolen. And if it isn't returned by summer solstice, there's going to be trouble. When you came, I was hoping ... I mean— Athena can get along with just about anybody, except for Ares. And of course she's got the rivalry with Poseidon.**

"Watch, he's going to one of those to."

**But, I mean, aside from that, I thought we could work together. I thought you might know something."**

**I shook my head. I wished I could help her, but I felt too hungry and tired and mentally overloaded to ask any more questions.**

**"I've got to get a quest," Annabeth muttered to her self. "I'm **_**not **_**too young. If they would just tell me the problem …"**

**I could smell barbecue smoke coming from somewhere nearby. Annabeth must've heard my stomach growl. She told me to go on, she'd catch me later. I left her on the pier, tracing her finger across the rail as if drawing a battle plan.**

"Yup totally not Max, she would have gone for food too."

"And you wouldn't have?" I shot back. He shock his head but nodded.

**Back at cabin eleven, everybody was talking and horsing around, waiting for dinner. For the first time, I noticed that a lot of the campers had similar features: sharp noses, upturned eyebrows, mischievous smiles. They were the kind of kids that teachers would peg as troublemakers. Thankfully, nobody paid much attention to me as I walked over to my spot on the floor and plopped down with my minotaur horn.**

**The counselor, Luke, came over. He had the Hermes family resemblance, too. It was marred by that scar on his right cheek, but his smile was intact.**

**"Found you a sleeping bag," he said. "And here, I stole you some toiletries from the camp store."**

**I couldn't tell if he was kidding about the stealing part.**

"Doubt it."

**I said, "Thanks."**

**"No prob." Luke sat next to me, pushed his back against the wall. "Tough first day?"**

**"I don't belong here," I said. "I don't even believe in gods."**

**"Yeah," he said. "That's how we all started. Once you start believing in them? It doesn't get any easier."**

**The bitterness in his voice surprised me, because Luke seemed like a pretty easygoing guy. He looked like he could handle just about anything.**

**"So your dad is Hermes?" I asked.**

**He pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket, and for a second I thought he was going to gut me, but he just scraped the mud off the sole of his sandal. "Yeah. Hermes."**

**"The wing-footed messenger guy."**

**"That's him. Messengers. Medicine. Travelers, merchants, thieves. Anybody who uses the roads. That's why you're here, enjoying cabin eleven's hospitality. Hermes isn't picky about who he sponsors."**

"Jeez, you would think he would be nicer."

**I figured Luke didn't mean to call me a nobody. He just had a lot on his mind.**

**"You ever meet your dad?" I asked.**

**"Once."**

**I waited, thinking that if he wanted to tell me, he'd tell me. Apparently, he didn't. I wondered if the story had any thing to do with how he got his scar.**

**Luke looked up and managed a smile. "Don't worry about it, Percy. The campers here, they're mostly good people. After all, we're extended family, right? We take care of each other."**

"So like you would be going out with your family, gross." Angel and Gazzy made a face. They did have a point.

**He seemed to understand how lost I felt, and I was grateful for that, because an older guy like him—even if he was a counselor—should've steered clear of an uncool middle-schooler like me. But Luke had welcomed me into the cabin. He'd even stolen me some toiletries, which was the nicest thing anybody had done for me all day.**

"Um, that's nice?" I broke off from reading to ask. I received no answer in reply.

**I decided to ask him my last big question, the one that had been bothering me all afternoon. "Clarisse, from Ares, was joking about me being 'Big Three' material. Then Annabeth ... twice, she said I might be 'the one.' She said I should talk to the Oracle. What was that all about?"**

"Maybe he's going to someone special? Or-" Ella cut off Nudge before she could get started.

**Luke folded his knife. "I hate prophecies."**

Join the club, I thought sourly.

**"What do you mean?"**

**His face twitched around the scar. "Let's just say I messed things up for everybody else. The last two years, ever since my trip to the Garden of the Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn't allowed any more quests. Annabeth's been dying to get out into the world. **

**She pestered Chiron so much he finally told her he already knew her fate. He'd had a prophecy from the Oracle. He wouldn't tell her the whole thing, but he said Annabeth wasn't destined to go on a quest yet. She had to wait until...somebody special came to the camp."**

**"Somebody special?"**

"So not him then?" Iggy tried to be serious, but epically fail as we all cracked up.

**"Don't worry about it, kid," Luke said. "Annabeth wants to think every new camper **

**who comes through here is the omen she's been waiting for. Now, come on, it's dinnertime."**

**The moment he said it, a horn blew in the distance. Somehow, I knew it was a conch shell, even though I'd never heard one before.**

**Luke yelled, "Eleven, fall in!"**

**The whole cabin, about twenty of us, filed into the commons yard. We lined up in order of seniority, so of course I was dead last. Campers came from the other cabins, too, except for the three empty cabins at the end, and cabin eight, which had looked normal in the daytime, but was now starting to glow silver as the sun went down.**

"That's so pretty," Angel smiled dreamy, "Who's cabin is that?"

"Um I think, Artemis, she's the goddess of hunt and sworn off men." Ella deeply in thought answered.

**We marched up the hill to the mess hall pavilion. Satyrs joined us from the meadow. Naiads emerged from the canoeing lake. A few other girls came out of the woods— and when I say out of the woods, I mean **_**straight **_**out of the woods. I saw one girl, about nine or ten years old, melt from the side of a maple tree and come skipping up the hill.**

"Okay, that's just creepy." everybody nodded with me.

**In all, there were maybe a hundred campers, a few dozen satyrs, and a dozen assorted wood nymphs and naiads.**

"Is that a lot?"

**At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Each cabin had its own table, covered in white cloth trimmed in purple. Four of the tables were empty, but cabin eleven's was way overcrowded. I had to squeeze on to the edge of a bench with half my butt hanging off.**

"That sucks."

**I saw Grover sitting at table twelve with Mr. D, a few satyrs, and a couple of plump blond boys who looked just like Mr. D. Chiron stood to one side, the picnic table being way too small for a centaur.**

Laughter was the only sound in the room for a while before I continued.

**Annabeth sat at table six with a bunch of serious-looking athletic kids, all with her gray eyes and honey-blond hair.**

**Clarisse sat behind me at Ares's table. She'd apparently gotten over being hosed down, because she was laughing and belching right alongside her friends.**

"That's disgusting!" Nudge shrieked, at the same time as Iggy screamed, "Cool!"

**Finally, Chiron pounded his hoof against the marble floor of the pavilion, and everybody fell silent. He raised a glass. "To the gods!"**

**Everybody else raised their glasses. "To the gods!"**

**Wood nymphs came forward with platters of food: grapes, apples, strawberries, cheese, fresh bread, and yes, barbecue! My glass was empty, but Luke said, "Speak to it. Whatever you want—nonalcoholic, of course."**

**I said, "Cherry Coke."**

**The glass filled with sparkling caramel liquid.**

**Then I had an idea. "**_**Blue **_**Cherry Coke."**

"I would sooo try that." I grinned towards Iggy in agreedness.

**The soda turned a violent shade of cobalt.**

**I took a cautious sip. Perfect.**

**I drank a toast to my mother.**

**She's not gone, I told myself. Not permanently, anyway. She's in the Underworld. And if that's a real place, then someday...**

**"Here you go, Percy," Luke said, handing me a platter of smoked brisket.**

**I loaded my plate and was about to take a big bite when I noticed everybody getting up, carrying their plates toward the fire in the center of the pavilion.**

**I wondered if they were going for dessert or something.**

"Pig." That one word said it all.

"What, we aren't pigs!" Iggy argued back. Or at least tried to.

**"Come on," Luke told me.**

**As I got closer, I saw that everyone was taking a portion of their meal and dropping it into the fire, the ripest straw berry, the juiciest slice of beef, the warmest, most buttery roll.**

**Luke murmured in my ear, "Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell."**

**"You're kidding."**

"Doesn't sound like it."

"But who would like the smell of burnt food?" Nudge started her rant, "I mean it would smell so bad, like weeks old food. Do you remember back at the E-house when we never ate the yogurt in the fridge? It was terrible, the worst thing I ever had. It was almost as bad as the people we seen in Georgia, who wore that purplish pinkish blackish shirt and those orange boot-like converse that totally didn't match. But it would have-"

"Nudge!" everyone screamed at her. She blushed and started apologizing. How can she go from the smell to shoes? I will never know.

**His look warned me not to take this lightly, but I couldn't help wondering why an immortal, all-powerful being would like the smell of burning food.**

**Luke approached the fire, bowed his head, and tossed in a cluster of fat red grapes. **

**"Hermes."**

**I was next.**

**I wished I knew what god's name to say.**

**Finally, I made a silent plea. **_**Whoever you are, tell me. Please.**_

"I guess that would be a good pray." Gazzy shrugged.

**I scraped a big slice of brisket into the flames.**

**When I caught a whiff of the smoke, I didn't gag.**

**It smelled nothing like burning food. It smelled of hot chocolate and fresh-baked brownies, hamburgers on the grill and wildflowers, and a hundred other good things that shouldn't have gone well together, but did. I could almost believe the gods could live off that smoke.**

"Great, now I'm hungry." Iggy moaned.

"Suck it up, chapters almost over." I glared, uselessly might I add, at him.

**When everybody had returned to their seats and finished eating their meals, Chiron pounded his hoof again for our attention.**

**Mr. D got up with a huge sigh. "Yes, I suppose I'd better say hello to all you brats. Well, hello. Our activities director, Chiron, says the next capture the flag is Friday. Cabin five presently holds the laurels."**

"Capture the flag? Isn't that's a kids game?" Ella asked no one.

**A bunch of ugly cheering rose from the Ares table.**

**"Personally," Mr. D continued, "I couldn't care less, but congratulations. Also, I should tell you that we have a new camper today. Peter Johnson."**

"Isn't his name Percy Jackson?" Angel asked confused.

"Yes, he's just being a very big meany." I told Angel, trying not to say anything to bad. Like cursing.

**Chiron murmured something.**

**"Er, Percy Jackson," Mr. D corrected. "That's right. Hurrah, and all that. Now run along to your silly campfire. Go on."**

**Everybody cheered. We all headed down toward the amphitheater, where Apollo's cabin led a sing-along. We sang camp songs about the gods and ate s'mores and joked around, and the funny thing was, I didn't feel that anyone was staring at me anymore. I felt that I was home.**

"Well that's always a good thing." Ella smiled.

**Later in the evening, when the sparks from the campfire were curling into a starry sky, the conch horn blew again, and we all filed back to our cabins. I didn't realize how exhausted I was until I collapsed on my borrowed sleeping bag.**

**My fingers curled around the Minotaur's horn. I thought about my mom, but I had good thoughts: her smile, the bedtime stories she would read me when I was a kid, the way she would tell me not to let the bedbugs bite.**

**When I closed my eyes, I fell asleep instantly.**

**That was my first day at Camp Half-Blood.**

**I wish I'd known how briefly I would get to enjoy my new home.**

"Great way to end the chapter." Iggy muttered sarcastically.

"Who wants to read next?" I asked.

Nudge raised his hand. "I will." she said, "I haven't read in a while.

I tossed her the book.

"We capture a flag."

**Well what do you think? Please review.**


	9. We Capture a Flag

**Disclaimer, I don't own any of this…except for the plot, maybe…**

Max's POV

"**We Capture a Flag,"** Nudge began quickly.

**The next few days I settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don't count the fact that I was getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs, and a centaur.**

"Well, for them I guess it is." I inputted, pondering how weird it would.

**Each morning I took Ancient Greek from Annabeth, and we talked about the gods and goddesses in the present tense, **

"That would be weird." Iggy smirked in a I-don't-really-care way.

Nudge snorted as she looked at the next sentence.

**which was kind of weird. I discovered Annabeth was right about my dyslexia: Ancient Greek wasn't that hard for me to read. At least, no harder than English.**

That must suck, I mused. At least we can read, I just wish we could spell better.

**After a couple of mornings, I could stumble through a few lines of Homer without too much headache.**

**The rest of the day, I'd rotate through outdoor activities, looking for something I was good at. Chiron tried to teach me archery,** **but we found out pretty quick I wasn't any good with a bow and arrow. **

"Err, how hard could it be?" Gazzy asked. No one knew so nobody could answer.

**He didn't complain, even when he had to desnag a stray arrow out of his tail.**

"ouch" Iggy finally mentioned after everyone was done laughing at his epic fail.

**Foot racing? No good either. The wood-nymph instructors left me in the dust. They told me not to worry about it. They'd had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree.**

"Slower than a tree." Total shock his furry head.

"That's not good man, not good at all." Iggy snorted.

**And wrestling? Forget it. Every time I got on the mat, Clarisse would pulverize me.**

"Gee, I wonder why?" Ella rolled her eyes

"Um, maybe because he broke her sword and embarrassed her? I don't know it just a guess." Iggy smoothly shot back. And may I add I think someone going to be barbeque soon by the way Ella glaring at him.

**"There's more where that came from, punk," she'd mumble in my ear.**

"Max are you sure she's not your sister also?" Fang smiled innocently at me. I narrowed my eyes at him. Oh he was so dead later. But then I smiled towards, I could practically see 'oh crap' written on his face.

"Of course she is. How else would she be so awesome at fighting, though my fighting skills are so much better, would you like to see?" I grinned at him again as he mumbled a "No" and shook his head.

**The only thing I really excelled at was canoeing, and that wasn't the kind of heroic skill people expected to see from the kid who had beaten the Minotaur.**

**I didn't have Hephaestus's skill with metalwork **

"Or my-our awesomeness with bombs!" Iggy and Gazzy high-five.

"Good thing."

"Maxi, I'm hurt." Iggy put his hand over his heart.

I wasted a glare on him, "Ever call me that again and you will be." he gulped and shut up.

**or—gods forbid— Dionysus's way with vine plants. **

"Someone's glad." Angel said in a singy voice.

**Luke told me I might be a child of Hermes, a kind of jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But I got the feeling he was just trying to make me feel better. He really didn't know what to make of me either.**

**Despite all that, I liked camp. I got used to the morning fog over the beach, the smell of hot strawberry fields in the afternoon, even the weird noises of monsters in the woods at night. I would eat dinner with cabin eleven, scrape part of my meal into the fire, and try to feel some connection to my real dad. Nothing came. **

The room had gotten quite at the talk of parents. Well, it was till Gazzy let one rip. Everyone was out in a second flat. Well everyone except said person (who was lightly laughing) and Iggy who crocked out somewhere in that greenish brown gas that _covered my room_ "Gasmask"

At the end of the hallway Nudge started, "Let us all remember Iggy, a dear friend and brother to us all." I chocked down my laugher with Fang and Total, while Ella and Angel smiled. "He was a brave soldier and pyromania. He went down in one of Gazzy's fart-erm-releases and is lost forever, but will remain in our hearts. He will be missed." she finished. I swore I could hear Gazzy laughing from my room. "Okay," she clapped her hands, "lets finish out side."

We all got comfortable on the grass and Nudge continued.

**Just that warm feeling I'd always had, like the memory of his smile. I tried not to think too much about my mom, but I kept wondering: if gods and monsters were real, if all this magical stuff was possible, surely there was some way to save her, to bring her back...**

**I started to understand Luke's bitterness and how he seemed to resent his father, Hermes. So okay, maybe gods had important things to do. But couldn't they call once in a while, or thunder, or something? Dionysus could make Diet Coke appear out of thin air. Why couldn't my dad, whoever he was, make a phone appear?**

"Well, he has a point."

**Thursday afternoon, three days after I'd arrived at Camp Half-Blood, I had my first sword-fighting lesson. Everybody from cabin eleven gathered in the big circular arena, where Luke would be our instructor.** **We started with basic stabbing and slashing, using some straw-stuffed dummies in Greek armor. I guess I did okay. At least, I understood what I was supposed to do and my reflexes were good.**

"That's good." Angel nodded.

**The problem was, I couldn't find a blade that felt right in my hands. Either they were too heavy, or too light, or too long.**

Her smile turned into a frown.

**Luke tried his best to fix me up, but he agreed that none of the practice blades seemed to work for me.**

**We moved on to dueling in pairs. Luke announced he would be my partner, since this was my first time.**

**"Good luck," one of the campers told me. "Luke's the best swordsman in the last three hundred years."**

So we get to see some action. I wouldn't mind learning to use a sword.

**"Maybe he'll go easy on me," I said.**

Fang snorted, "That wouldn't help you."

**The camper snorted.**

Fang look startled while the rest of us cracked up.

**Luke showed me thrusts and parries and shield blocks the hard way. With every swipe, I got a little more battered and bruised. "Keep your guard up, Percy," he'd say, then whap me in the ribs with the flat of his blade. "No, not that far up!" **_**Whap! **_**"Lunge!" **_**Whap! **_**"Now, back!" **_**Whap!**_

Every time the 'whap' was said, my sister wince in sympathy.

**By the time he called a break, I was soaked in sweat. Everybody swarmed the drinks cooler. Luke poured ice water on his head, which looked like such a good idea, I did the same.**

"Yea, it really helps."

**Instantly, I felt better. Strength surged back into my arms. The sword didn't feel so awkward.**

Well, not that much.

**"Okay, everybody circle up!" Luke ordered. "If Percy doesn't mind, I want to give you a little demo."**

**Great, I thought. Let's all watch Percy get pounded.**

"He's pessimistic isn't he?" Total questioned.

**The Hermes guys gathered around. They were suppressing smiles. I figured they'd been in my shoes before and couldn't wait to see how Luke used me for a punching bag. He told everybody he was going to demonstrate a disarming technique: how to twist the enemy's blade with the flat of your own sword so that he had no choice but to drop his weapon.**

What lovely people. Note the sarcasm. Ella vocalize what I just thought.

"That would be a good technique to know." Fang nodded his head.

**"This is difficult," he stressed. "I've had it used against me. No laughing at Percy, now. Most swordsmen have to work years to master this technique."**

**He demonstrated the move on me in slow motion. Sure enough, the sword clattered out of my hand.**

**"Now in real time," he said, after I'd retrieved my weapon. "We keep sparring until one of us pulls it off. Ready, Percy?"**

"Go Percy!" Angel cheered for him.

**I nodded, and Luke came after me. Somehow, I kept him from getting a shot at the hilt of my sword. My senses opened up. I saw his attacks coming. I countered. I stepped forward and tried a thrust of my own. Luke deflected it easily, but I saw a change in his face. His eyes narrowed, and he started to press me with more force.** **The sword grew heavy in my hand. The balance wasn't right.**

**I knew it was only a matter of seconds before Luke took me down, so I figured, what the heck?**

**I tried the disarming maneuver.**

**My blade hit the base of Luke's and I twisted, putting my whole weight into a downward thrust.**

_**Clang.**_

**Luke's sword rattled against the stones.**

All of our mouths were open in shock.

**The tip of my blade was an inch from his undefended chest.**

**The other campers were silent.**

**I lowered my sword. "Um, sorry."**

"And he apologies?" I threw my hands in the air in disbelief. "Why would he apologize? He has nothing to apologize for!" I ranted. Everyone agreed with me except for Fang how shot me an amused look. Embarrassed for freaking no reason I quite my rant.

**For a moment, Luke was too stunned to speak.**

**"Sorry?" His scarred face broke into a grin. "By the gods, Percy, why are you sorry? Show me that again!"**

**I didn't want to. The short burst of manic energy had completely abandoned me. But Luke insisted.**

**This time, there was no contest. The moment our swords connected, Luke hit my hilt and sent my weapon skidding across the floor.**

"So it was because of water and adrenaline? That's cool."

**After a long pause, somebody in the audience said, "Beginner's luck?"**

"No beginner could do that, even with luck." Nudge commented.

**Luke wiped the sweat off his brow. He appraised at me with an entirely new interest. "Maybe," he said. "But I wonder what Percy could do with a balanced sword..."**

"Much more damage." Ella smiled.

**Friday afternoon, I was sitting with Grover at the lake, resting from a near-death experience on the climbing wall.**

Oh come on, it couldn't be that bad…

**Grover had scampered to the top like a mountain goat, but the lava had almost gotten me. My shirt had smoking holes in it. The hairs had been singed off my forearms.**

…I stand corrected

**We sat on the pier, watching the naiads do underwater basket-weaving, until I got up the nerve to ask Grover how his conversation had gone with Mr. D.**

"Basket-weaving is useful?" I asked.

"Terrible of course. Its Mr. D." My sister said at the same time.

**His face turned a sickly shade of yellow.**

**"Fine," he said. "Just great."**

**"So your career's still on track?"**

"He was lying!" Total shockly commented.

**He glanced at me nervously. "Chiron t-told you I want a searcher's license?"**

**"Well... no." I had no idea what a searcher's license was, but it didn't seem like the right time to ask.**

"You think?" Angel asked.

**"He just said you had big plans, you know ... and that you needed credit for completing a keeper's assignment. So did you get it?"**

**Grover looked down at the naiads. "Mr. D suspended judgment. He said I hadn't failed or succeeded with you yet, so our fates were still tied together. If you got a quest and I went along to protect you, and we both came back alive, then maybe he'd consider the job complete."**

"So that's good, right?"

**My spirits lifted. "Well, that's not so bad, right?"**

_**"Blaa-ha-ha!**_ **He might as well have transferred me to stable-cleaning duty. The chances of you getting a quest... and even if you did, why would you want **_**me **_**along?"**

"Because you're his friend? I don't know, it just a guess." I sarcastically stated.

Just then a laughing Gazzy decided to come back carrying a half passed out Iggy. I raised my eyebrow at them in question. Through his laughter he managed, "Had to wake him…" while Iggy, "mum na evil." towards us.

"We thought you were dead Iggy!" Nudge suppressed a giggle after she said this.

"yea," I add, "We even said a short goodbye to you." At which nobody could hold it and broke into fits of laughter, except Iggy- who I wasn't sure had completely processed what I said.

"Now Shut up!" Nudge exclaimed, "I going to read again.

**"Of course I'd want you along!"**

**Grover stared glumly into the water. "Basket-weaving ... Must be nice to have a useful skill."**

Its not useful! I internally yelled.

**I tried to reassure him that he had lots of talents, but that just made him look more miserable. We talked about canoeing and swordplay for a while, then debated the pros and cons of the different gods. Finally, I asked him about the four empty cabins.**

**"Number eight, the silver one, belongs to Artemis," he said. "She vowed to be a maiden forever. So of course, no kids. The cabin is, you know, honorary. If she didn't have one, she'd be mad."**

"Of course! Ill be mad too." Ella commented.

**"Yeah, okay. But the other three, the ones at the end. Are those the Big Three?"**

**Grover tensed. We were getting close to a touchy subject. "No. One of them, number two, is Hera's," he said. "That's another honorary thing. She's the goddess of marriage, so of course she wouldn't go around having affairs with mortals. That's her husband's job. **

"Bet he wouldn't like to hear that." Fang mumbled in that hot way of his. Wait! Forget I said that!

**When we say the Big Three, we mean the three powerful brothers, the sons of Kronos."**

**"Zeus, Poseidon, Hades."**

**"Right. You know. After the great battle with the Titans, they took over the world from their dad and drew lots to decide who got what."**

**"Zeus got the sky," I remembered. "Poseidon the sea, Hades the Underworld."**

**"Uh-huh."**

**"But Hades doesn't have a cabin here."**

"Of course it doesn't, it would like emo dude's over hear." Iggy pointed to Fang, who I thought for sure was going to murder him. "All back and depressing, except more death stuff in it."

**"No. He doesn't have a throne on Olympus, either. He sort of does his own thing down in the Underworld. If he did have a cabin here ..." Grover shuddered. "Well, it wouldn't be pleasant. Let's leave it at that."**

**"But Zeus and Poseidon—they both had, like, a bazillion kids in the myths. Why are their cabins empty?"**

Ella nodded her head in agreement.

**Grover shifted his hooves uncomfortably.**

**"About sixty years ago, after World War II, the Big Three agreed they wouldn't sire any more heroes.**

**Their children were just too powerful. They were affecting the course of human events too much, causing too much carnage. World War II, you know, that was basically a fight between the sons of Zeus and Poseidon on one side, and the sons of Hades on the other. **

Oh, that's still stupid though.

**The winning side, Zeus and Poseidon, made Hades swear an oath with them: no more affairs with mortal women. They all swore on the River Styx."**

"That isn't going to last long is it?"

**Thunder boomed.**

**I said, "That's the most serious oath you can make."**

**Grover nodded.**

**"And the brothers kept their word—no kids?"**

**Grover's face darkened. "Seventeen years ago, Zeus fell off the wagon.**

**There was this TV starlet with a big fluffy eighties hairdo—he just couldn't help himself. When their child was born, a little girl named Thalia... well, the River Styx is serious about promises. Zeus himself got off easy because he's immortal, but he brought a terrible fate on his daughter."**

"That's terrible!" Angel cried, "It wasn't her fault." We all agreed with Angel, but I was wondering what find of fate.

**"But that isn't fair.' It wasn't the little girl's fault."**

**Grover hesitated. "Percy, children of the Big Three have powers greater than other half-bloods.**

**They have a strong aura, a scent that attracts monsters. When Hades found out about the girl, he wasn't too happy about Zeus breaking his oath. Hades let the worst monsters out of Tartarus to torment Thalia. A satyr was assigned to be her keeper when she was twelve, but there was nothing he could do.**

"Who wants to bet that the satyr is him?" Iggy scrambled to get his wallet. He pulled out twenty bucks but no one wanted to bet. I guess we all thought the same thing as Iggy and didn't want to lose money. With a disappointed face he put his money back in and I motioned for Nudge to continue.

**He tried to escort her here with a couple of other half-bloods she'd befriended. They almost made it. They got all the way to the top of that hill."**

**He pointed across the valley, to the pine tree where I'd fought the Minotaur. "All three Kindly Ones were after them, along with a horde of hellhounds. They were about to be overrun when Thalia told her satyr to take the other two half-bloods to safety while she held off the monsters. She was wounded and tired, and she didn't want to live like a hunted animal. **

"Who would?" Nudge whispered.

**The satyr didn't want to leave her, but he couldn't change her mind, and he had to protect the others. So Thalia made her final stand alone, at the top of that hill. As she died,** **Zeus took pity on her. He turned her into that pine tree. Her spirit still helps protect the borders of the valley. That's why the hill is called Half-Blood Hill."**

**I stared at the pine in the distance.**

**The story made me feel hollow and guilty too. A girl my age had sacrificed herself to save her friends. She had faced a whole army of monsters. Next to that, my victory over the Minotaur didn't seem like much.**

He still did good, he shouldn't put himself down. He never fought a monster before, and by the sounds of it, she has. I shook my head and continued listening to the story.

**I wondered if I'd acted differently, could I have saved my mother?**

**"Grover," I said, "Have heroes really gone on quests to the Underworld?"**

**"Sometimes," he said. "Orpheus. Hercules. Houdini."**

**"And have they ever returned somebody from the dead?"**

**"No. Never. Orpheus came close... . Percy, you're not seriously thinking—"**

**"No," I lied.**

"yes, yes he is." Gazzy snorted, "how did he fall for that?"

**"I was just wondering. So ... a satyr is always assigned to guard a demigod?"**

**Grover studied me warily. I hadn't persuaded him that I'd really dropped the Underworld idea. "Not always. We go undercover to a lot of schools. We try to sniff out the half-bloods who have the makings of great heroes. If we find one with a very strong aura, like a child of the Big Three, we alert Chiron. He tries to keep an eye on them, since they could cause really huge problems."**

**"And you found me. Chiron said you thought I might be something special."**

**Grover looked as if I'd just led him into a trap. **

"Which you kinda did." I pointed out.

**"I didn't... Oh, listen, don't think like that. If you **_**were**_—**you know—you'd never **_**ever **_**be allowed a quest, and I'd never get my license. You're probably a child of Hermes. Or maybe even one of the minor gods, like Nemesis, the god of revenge. Don't worry, okay?"**

**I got the idea he was reassuring himself more than me.**

**That night after dinner, there was a lot more excitement than usual.**

**At last, it was time for capture the flag.**

**When the plates were cleared away, the conch horn sounded and we all stood at our tables.**

**Campers yelled and cheered as Annabeth and two of her siblings ran into the pavilion carrying a silk banner. It was about ten feet long, glistening gray, with a painting of a barn owl above an olive tree. From the opposite side of the pavilion, Clarisse and her buddies ran in with another banner, of identical size, but gaudy red, painted with a bloody spear and a boar's head.**

"The Athena's flag is pretty," Angel smiled at the description, "But not so much for the Ares's flag." she frowned.

**I turned to Luke and yelled over the noise, "Those are the flags?"**

"No duh," I whispered, "Did you seriously just ask that?"

**"Yeah."**

**"Ares and Athena always lead the teams?"**

**"Not always," he said. "But often."**

**"So, if another cabin captures one, what do you do— repaint the flag?"**

**He grinned. "You'll see. First we have to get one."**

**"Whose side are we on?"**

"Well," Iggy started in a serious important tone, "Since you embarrassed the Ares' cabin, I think its safe to say your on the Athena side."

**He gave me a sly look, as if he knew something I didn't. The scar on his face made him look almost evil in the torchlight. "We've made a temporary alliance with Athena. Tonight, we get the flag from Ares. And **_**you **_**are going to help."**

Iggy pumped his hand in the air like he won top prize. I just rolled my eyes at his stupidity while Ella and Nudge giggled.

**The teams were announced. Athena had made an alliance with Apollo and Hermes, the two biggest cabins.**

Size isn't always the best way to go. I was lost in thought of all those battles with the erasers that we won. Looking over at Fang, I could tell he was thinking the same.

**Apparently, privileges had been traded—shower times, chore schedules, the best slots for activities—in order to win support.**

**Ares had allied themselves with everybody else: Dionysus, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus. From what I'd seen, Dionysus's kids were actually good athletes, but there were only two of them. **

**Demeter's kids had the edge with nature skills and outdoor stuff but they weren't very aggressive. Aphrodite's sons and daughters I wasn't too worried about. They mostly sat out every activity and checked their reflections in the lake and did their hair and gossiped. **

**Hephaestus's kids weren't pretty, and there were only four of them, but they were big and burly from working in the metal shop all day. They might be a problem.**

**That, of course, left Ares's cabin: a dozen of the biggest, ugliest, meanest kids on Long Island, or anywhere else on the planet.**

Iggy coughed, "I think they mean seven, right Max?" I looked around the ground till I found the perfect rock. Iggy probably could tell I was up to something as he was trying to hide behind Fang who looked beyond annoyed. I motioned for Nudge to continue, I'll get him next time.

**Chiron hammered his hoof on the marble.**

**"Heroes!" he announced. "You know the rules. The creek is the boundary line. The entire forest is fair game. All magic items are allowed. The banner must be prominently displayed, and have no more than two guards. Prisoners may be disarmed, but may not be bound or gagged. No killing or maiming is allowed.**

Yea, right. And I don't have wings.

**I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. Arm yourselves!"**

**He spread his hands, and the tables were suddenly covered with equipment: helmets, bronze swords, spears, ox hide shields coated in metal.**

**"Whoa," I said. "We're really supposed to use these?"**

Some of us face palmed. Does this kid want to die?

**Luke looked at me as if I were crazy. "Unless you want to get skewered by your friends in cabin five.**

**Here—Chiron thought these would fit. You'll be on border patrol."**

**My shield was the size of an NBA backboard, with a big caduceus in the middle. It weighed about a million pounds. I could have snowboarded on it fine, **

"your going into a fight, and your thinking about snowboarding?" Total chocked on his laughter.

**but I hoped nobody seriously expected me to run fast. My helmet, like all the helmets on Athena's side, had a blue horsehair plume on top. Ares and their allies had red plumes.**

**Annabeth yelled, "Blue team, forward!"**

**We cheered and shook our swords and followed her down the path to the south woods. The red team yelled taunts at us as they headed off toward the north.**

**I managed to catch up with Annabeth without tripping over my equipment. **

**"Hey."**

**She kept marching.**

**"So what's the plan?" I asked. "Got any magic items you can loan me?"**

**Her hand drifted toward her pocket, as if she were afraid I'd stolen something.**

So she does…wonder what it is?

**"Just watch Clarisse's spear," she said. "You don't want that thing touching you. Otherwise, don't worry. We'll take the banner from Ares. Has Luke given you your job?"**

**"Border patrol, whatever that means."**

How stupid can this guy get?

**"It's easy. Stand by the creek, keep the reds away. Leave the rest to me. Athena always has a plan."**

**She pushed ahead, leaving me in the dust.**

**"Okay," I mumbled. "Glad you wanted me on your team."**

"That's okay dude, there's other chicks out there" Iggy looked glazed over. Pervert.

"Iggy, you know your talking to a book, right?" Nudge smiled as he stumbled over his words, "Wha, o-of course. But-no, so did you!" smooth Ig, smooth.

**It was a warm, sticky night. The woods were dark, with fireflies popping in and out of view**_**. **_**Annabeth stationed me next to a little creek that gurgled over some rocks, then she and the rest of the team scattered into the trees.**

**Standing there alone, with my big blue-feathered helmet and my huge shield, I felt like an idiot. **

**The bronze sword, like all the swords I'd tried so far, seemed balanced wrong. The leather grip pulled on my hand like a bowling ball.**

**There was no way anybody would actually attack me, would they? **

"And I repeat, Stupid!" that my friends, came from the one and only me.

**I mean, Olympus had to have liability issues, right?**

**Far away, the conch horn blew. I heard whoops and yells in the woods, the clanking of metal, kids fighting. A blue-plumed ally from Apollo raced past me like a deer, leaped through the creek, and disappeared into enemy territory.**

**Great, I thought. I'll miss all the fun, as usual.**

**Then I heard a sound that sent a chill up my spine, a low canine growl, somewhere close by.**

Wary looks were passed around. We all were wondering, 'what know?'

**I raised my shield instinctively; I had the feeling something was stalking me.**

**Then the growling stopped. I felt the presence retreating.**

**On the other side of the creek, the underbrush exploded. Five Ares warriors came yelling and screaming out of the dark.**

**"Cream the punk!" Clarisse screamed.**

**Her ugly pig eyes glared through the slits of her helmet. She brandished a five-foot-long spear, its barbed metal tip flickering with red light. Her siblings had only the standard-issue bronze swords—not that that made me feel any better.**

**They charged across the stream. There was no help in sight. I could run. Or I could defend myself against half the Ares cabin.**

**I managed to sidestep the first kid's swing, but these guys were not as stupid the Minotaur. They surrounded me, and Clarisse thrust at me with her spear. My shield deflected the point, but I felt a painful tingling all over my body. My hair stood on end. My shield arm went numb, and the air burned.**

**Electricity. Her stupid spear was electric. I fell back.**

"Don't hate! Her spear is awesome!" Gazzy grinned. Note to self. Never give Gazzy _or_ Iggy any electric weapon.

**Another Ares guy slammed me in the chest with the butt of his sword and I hit the dirt.**

**They could've kicked me into jelly, but they were too busy laughing.**

**"Give him a haircut," Clarisse said. "Grab his hair."**

**I managed to get to my feet. I raised my sword, but Clarisse slammed it aside with her spear as sparks flew. Now both my arms felt numb.**

**"Oh, wow," Clarisse said. "I'm scared of this guy. Really scared."**

**"The flag is that way," I told her. I wanted to sound angry, but I was afraid it didn't come out that way.**

**"Yeah," one of her siblings said. "But see, we don't care about the flag. We care about a guy who made our cabin look stupid."**

**"You do that without my help," I told them. It probably wasn't the smartest thing to say.**

"Yea think?" I'm proud to say it wasn't me, no it was all Fang.

**Two of them came at me. I backed up toward the creek, tried to raise my shield, but Clarisse was too fast. Her spear stuck me straight in the ribs. If I hadn't been wearing an armored breastplate, I would've been shish-kabobbed. As it was, the electric point just about shocked my teeth out of my mouth. One of her cabinmates slashed his sword across my arm, leaving a good-size cut.**

**Seeing my own blood made me dizzy—warm and cold at the same time.**

**"No maiming," I managed to say.**

**"Oops," the guy said. "Guess I lost my dessert privilege."**

"Dessert privilege? Who's going to care about dessert if they're attacking someone who makes look like idiots?" Iggy looked shock at what the give said, along with the rest of us.

**He pushed me into the creek and I landed with a splash.**

**They all laughed. I figured as soon as they were through being amused, I would die. But then something happened. The water seemed to wake up my senses, as if I'd just had a bag of my mom's double-espresso jelly beans.**

**Clarisse and her cabinmates came into the creek to get me, but I stood to meet them. I knew what to do. I swung the flat of my sword against the first guy's head and knocked his helmet clean off. I hit him so hard I could see his eyes vibrating as he crumpled into the water.**

Everyone winced at the description of this particular battle.

**Ugly Number Two and Ugly Number Three came at me. **

"Love the nicknames."

**I slammed one in the face with my shield and used my sword to shear off the other guy's horsehair plume. Both of them backed up quick. Ugly Number Four didn't look really anxious to attack, but Clarisse kept coming, the point of her spear crackling with energy. As soon as she thrust, I caught the shaft between the edge of my shield and my sword, and I snapped it like a twig.**

"No!" Iggy 'cried', "Not the electric sword!" He but his head on Gazzy, who looked unsure whether to comfort him or not.

**"Ah!" she screamed. "You idiot! You corpse-breath worm!"**

**She probably would've said worse, but I smacked her between the eyes with my sword-butt and sent her stumbling backward out of the creek.**

**Then I heard yelling, elated screams, and I saw Luke racing toward the boundary line with the red team's banner lifted high. He was flanked by a couple of Hermes guys covering his retreat, and a few Apollos behind them, fighting off the Hephaestus kids. The Ares folks got up, and Clarisse muttered a dazed curse.**

**"A trick!" she shouted. "It was a trick."**

"No duh," Ella said.

**They staggered after Luke, but it was too late. Everybody converged on the creek as Luke ran across into friendly territory. Our side exploded into cheers. The red banner shimmered and turned to silver. The boar and spear were replaced with a huge caduceus, the symbol of cabin eleven. Everybody on the blue team picked up Luke and started carrying him around on their shoulders. Chiron cantered out from the woods and blew the conch horn.**

**The game was over. We'd won.**

**I was about to join the celebration when Annabeth's voice, right next to me in the creek, said, "Not bad, hero."**

**I looked, but she wasn't there.**

"Soooo, your hallucinating?" Nudge quickly put in before continuing.

**"Where the heck did you learn to fight like that?" she asked. The air shimmered, and she materialized, holding a Yankees baseball cap as if she'd just taken it off her head.**

**I felt myself getting angry. I wasn't even fazed by the fact that she'd just been invisible. "You set me up," I said. "You put me here because you knew Clarisse would come after me, while you sent Luke around the flank. You had it all figured out."**

**Annabeth shrugged. "I told you. Athena always, always has a plan."**

A plan to get him killed more like it.

**"A plan to get me pulverized."**

**"I came as fast as I could. I was about to jump in, but ..." She shrugged. "You didn't need help."**

**Then she noticed my wounded arm. "How did you do that?"**

**"Sword cut," I said. "What do you think?"**

**"No. It **_**was **_**a sword cut. Look at it."**

**The blood was gone. Where the huge cut had been, there was a long white scratch, and even that was fading. As I watched, it turned into a small scar, and disappeared.**

"That's cool." Gazzy share a glance with Iggy.

**"I—I don't get it," I said.**

**Annabeth was thinking hard.**

**I could almost see the gears turning. She looked down at my feet, then at Clarisse's broken spear, and said, "Step out of the water, Percy."**

**"What—"**

**"Just do it."**

**I came out of the creek and immediately felt bone tired. My arms started to go numb again. My adrenaline rush left me. I almost fell over, but Annabeth steadied me.**

**"Oh, Styx," she cursed. "This is **_**not **_**good. I didn't want ... I assumed it would be Zeus... "**

"Why Zeus, and what does she mean?" Nudge looked like she could go on all day, luckily Ella told her the book would probably explain.

**Before I could ask what she meant, I heard that canine growl again, but much closer than before. A howl ripped through the forest. **

Shivers ran down everybody back at the remember of erasers.

**The campers' cheering died instantly. Chiron shouted something in Ancient Greek, which I would realize, only later, I had understood perfectly: **_**"Stand ready! My bow!"**_

**Annabeth drew her sword.**

**There on the rocks just above us was a black hound the size of a rhino, with lava-red eyes and fangs like daggers.**

Even more, I could feel my self pale at the reminder.

**It was looking straight at me.**

**Nobody moved except Annabeth, who yelled, "Percy, run!"**

**She tried to step in front of me, but the hound was too fast. It leaped over her—an enormous shadow with teeth—and just as it hit me, as I stumbled backward and felt its razor-sharp claws ripping through my armor, there was a cascade of thwacking sounds, like forty pieces of paper being ripped one after the other. From the hounds neck sprouted a cluster of arrows. The monster fell dead at my feet.**

At some point I had reached over and grabbed Fang's hand without even realizing it. He send me a sideways glace but didn't say anything, which I was grateful for. The image of when Ari had attacked us at the beach and I thought Fang was going to die keep forcing its way into my brain. **(I believe its book 2)**

**By some miracle, I was still alive. I didn't want to look underneath the ruins of my shredded armor. My chest felt warm and wet, and I knew I was badly cut. Another second, and the monster would've turned me into a hundred pounds of delicatessen meat.**

Nudge had paused to catch her breath.

**Chiron trotted up next to us, a bow in his hand, his face grim.**

_**"Di immortales!"**_ **Annabeth said. "That's a hellhound from the Fields of Punishment. They don't ... they're not supposed to ..."**

**"Someone summoned it," Chiron said. "Someone inside the camp."**

**Luke came over, the banner in his hand forgotten, his moment of glory gone.**

**Clarisse yelled, "It's all Percy's fault! Percy summoned it!"**

Oh yes, because he _sooo_ wanted to kill himself.

**"Be quiet, child," Chiron told her.**

**We watched the body of the hellhound melt into shadow, soaking into the ground until it disappeared.**

**"You're wounded," Annabeth told me. "Quick, Percy, get in the water."**

**"I'm okay."**

**"No, you're not," she said. "Chiron, watch this."**

**I was too tired to argue. I stepped back into the creek, the whole camp gathering around me.**

**Instantly, I felt better. I could feel the cuts on my chest closing up. Some of the campers gasped.**

**"Look, I—I don't know why," I said, trying to apologize. "I'm sorry..."**

"Quite apologizing. You didn't do anything wrong. Just because you have awesome powers and-" Ella had clamped her hand over Nudge's mouth. She blushed and started reading again.

**But they weren't watching my wounds heal. They were staring at something above my head.**

**"Percy," Annabeth said, pointing. "Um ..."**

**By the time I looked up, the sign was already fading, but I could still make out the hologram of green light, spinning and gleaming. A three-tipped spear: a trident.**

Poseidon." Ella breathed out slowly.

**"Your father," Annabeth murmured. "This is **_**really **_**not good."**

**"It is determined," Chiron announced.**

**All around me, campers started kneeling, even the Ares cabin, though they didn't look happy about it.**

**"My father?" I asked, completely bewildered.**

**"Poseidon," said Chiron. "Earthshaker, Stormbringer, Father of Horses. Hail, Perseus Jackson, Son of the Sea God."**

"Chap's down." Nudge passed it to Ella.

"I am offered a Quest."


End file.
